Comparing the Four Global Temperature Data Sets

THERE are four official global temperature data sets and there has been much debate and discussion as to which best represents change in global temperature.

Tom Quirk has analysed variations within and between these data sets and concludes there is 1. Substantial general agreement between the data sets, 2. Substantial short-term variation in global temperature in all data sets and 3. No data set shows a significant measurable rise in global temperature over the twelve year period since 1997.

Global Temperature Revisited

Article by Tom Quirk

One of the most vexing things about climate change is the endless debate about temperatures. Did they rise, did they fall or were they pushed? At times it seems like a Monty Python sketch of either the Dead Parrot or the 5 or 10 Minute Argument.

However it is possible to see some of the issues by looking at the four temperature series that are advanced from:

GISS – Goddard Institute for Space Studies and home of James Hansen,

Hadley Centre – British Meteorological Office research centre

UAH – The University of Alabama, Huntsville, home of Roy Spencer with his colleagues including John Christy of NASA and

RSS – Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, a company supported by NASA for the analysis of satellite data.

The first two groups use ground based data where possible with a degree of commonality. However since 70% of the surface of the earth is ocean and it is not monitored in a detailed manner, various procedures with possibly heroic assumptions and computer modelling, are followed to fill the ocean gap.

The last two groups use satellite data to probe the atmosphere and with the exception of the Polar Regions which are less than 10% of the globe, they get comprehensive coverage.

One question is of course are the two groups measuring the same temperature? After all the satellite looks down through the atmosphere, while the ground stations are exactly that.

There is an important distinction to be made between measuring the temperature and measuring the change in the temperature. Since the interest is in changing temperatures then what is called the global temperature anomaly is the starting point. The issue of measuring absolute temperatures should be put to one side.

Data from 1997 to 2009 was drawn from the four group websites on the 28 April 2009. When data for 1997 to early 2008 was compared to data acquired in early 2008 differences were found as shown in the first table.

This is evidence of substantial reprocessing and re-evaluation of data. This is not unusual with complicated analysis systems but there is so much interest in the results that adjustments are regarded with great suspicion. This is the fault of those publishing the temperature data as they fail to make the point that monthly and even yearly measurements are about weather and not climate.

The latest series of temperature anomalies are shown in the graph where the monthly data has been averaged into quarters. All statistical analysis that follows is on the monthly data unless stated otherwise.

From inspection, there is substantial agreement over the years 1997 to 2008. This can be statistically measured through correlations. This is a measure of how closely related the series may be. A value of 0 implies independent series while a value of 1 implies complete agreement. The correlation in turn indicates the degree of commonality in the comparison.

This is remarkable agreement given the two very different techniques used.

It is important to note that the two satellite analysis groups draw measurements from the same satellites. So the differences in temperatures are a result of analysis procedures that are not simple. In fact corrections to the data have been the subject of exchanges between the two groups.

The ground based measurements also have a common data base but it is clear and acknowledged that the two groups have different analysis procedures. While the satellite analysis procedures have converged to reduce their differences over the last thirty years, this has not been the case for the ground based procedures.

It is also clear looking at the measurements that there are substantial short-term, say less than 2 years, variations over the period 1997 to 2009. In fact, while the overall monthly variations show a scatter with standard deviation of 0.20C, the month to month variations are 0.10C. This is a measure of features that are clear in the data. The short run sequences of temperature movement are a reflection of variability in the atmosphere from events such as El Ninos (1997-98) and La Ninas.

Looking for a simple trend by fitting curves through a highly variable series is both a problem and a courageous exercise. The results on an annual rather than a monthly basis are given in the third table. The problem of dealing with real short term variations was resolved by ignoring them.

So for twelve years there has been a rise 0.10C with a 140% error, in other words, no significant measureable temperature rise. You can play with the data. If you omit 1998 then you can double the change. But 1998 was an El Nino year followed in 1999 by a La Nina. If we omit both years then the results are unchanged.

However the lesson from this is to look at the detail.

There is so much variability within the 12 year period that seeking a trend that might raise the temperature by 20C over 100 years would not be detectable. On the other hand there are clearly fluctuations on a monthly and yearly scale that will have nothing to do with the predicted effects of anthropogenic CO2.

The twelve year temperature changes from the data of the four analysis centres reveal some possible differences. Since there is a high degree of commonality amongst the results, any differences may be systematic. Both the GISS and Hadley series show a larger temperature increase then the satellite measurements. This may be due to urban heat island effects.

Finally, if you are looking for temperature increases from CO2 in the atmosphere, then you should choose the satellite approach of measuring temperatures in the atmosphere!

Short term, less than thirty years, temperature series are not the place to seek evidence of human induced global warming.

The photograph is from Anthony Watt’s website that details his program of photographically surveying every one of the 1221 USHCN weather stations in the USA which are used as a “high quality network” to determine near surface temperature trends in the USA, read more here http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/

172 thoughts on “Comparing the Four Global Temperature Data Sets”

New Scientist 9 May: In an article on the Wolfram Alpha engine, it says “Wolfram’s site is aiming to be as trustworthy as gold-standard sources, such as NASA’s climate data sets” Author Jim Giles, a name to remember.

This whole thing confuses the heck out of me. I think there needs to be an international grid standard of definable points ( every 5 minutes around the globe ) that are measured upon at definable intervals ( hourly ) and in 3 dimensions and get the stinking data. The temperature at any defineable point in the grid should independently verified and then there can be no debate on the temapeature differentials between points in time.

Can anyone explain me how two datasets can have a strong cross-correlation factor (minimum 75%) on one side, and on the other side trends which are different by a factor of 10? There’s something strange there…

Good post. At last someone who says what I’ve been saying for months. That is, while we cannot say whether global warming is continuing, we most definitely cannot say that the earth is cooling.
The agreement between the 4 data sets is also striking and, I believe, goes back before 1997. Any disagreement between UAH & RSS (and the others) originates in the pre-1992 period.
Finally whatever disagreement exist can easily be explained by some or all of the folllowing.
1. The 1998 EL Nino did not amplify GISS temperatures as much as the others.
2. GISS extrapolates over the arctic. The arctic has been particularly warm in recent years.
3. Satellite and surface appear to have a different ‘lag’ in response to ENSO events.
4. Most obvious of all. The satellites and surface thermometers are measuring quite different things.
Can we now put the ‘fraud’ and ‘corruption’ nonsense to bed.

Interesting artikle that clarifies who is who and who does what.
Can anyone tell me;
1) A 140% error was mentioned. Surely you can’t possibly begn to accept data with this degree of error. Is that figure correct or does it mean something different in this context?
2) From a ground station we presumably mean a weather station that has temperature sensor at say 3 foot above the ground level (ignoring those with UHI/A/c issues, or those stuck at 40 foot on a roof)
3) At what height is the satellite measuring temperature. 3 foot? (so being directly comparable to ground stations) 10 feet? An average of all the lower atmosphere?
Thanks for the clarification.
Tonyb

Please feel free not to accept this as it is off topic. However, I thought it is of interest in the way that a judge has said that :
[snip – yes OT I’m sorry, while there are parallels to the AGW issue, it is really not relevant here- Anthony]l

One of the major issues in detecting “climate change” (which usually really means 30 year plus weather) is that we have not got a decent global scale history of temperatures for any length of time. We have the thermometers concentrated in the USA, Europe, and Japan (to a lessor extent) and if you go back in the historical record at all, it’s even more sparse.
This is, IMHO, why folks are so desperate to “interpolate” missing data and just make stuff up (with fancy math, but still “made up”…) See:
chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/so_many_thermometers_so_little_time/

Short term, less than thirty years, temperature series are not the place to seek evidence of human induced global warming.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Would you say that his conclusion is “use the land based data for climate, i.e larger than 30 year changes?”, which is what the IPCC has done? Hmm
Should emphasize that corrections should be audited.

“since 70% of the surface of the earth is ocean and it is not monitored in a detailed manner, various procedures with possibly heroic assumptions and computer modelling, are followed to fill the ocean gap.”
Nonsense. No computer modelling or heroic assumptions are needed. GISS use satellite data for ocean temperatures. HadCRUT use the HadSST dataset which is based on direct measurement. Did you read any of the documentation?
“This is the fault of those publishing the temperature data as they fail to make the point that monthly and even yearly measurements are about weather and not climate”
Don’t be absurd. They make this point time and time and time again. If anyone chooses to ignore this point, they’ve only got themselves to blame.
“for twelve years there has been a rise 0.10C with a 140% error”
Firstly, you don’t say how you calculated the error on the trend in each individual dataset. Unless you properly modelled the autocorrelation then these figures will be wrong. Second, it appears that you simply averaged the errors you calculated to get the error you quote on the average trend. This is incorrect.
Doing the errors properly would most likely increase them. The conclusion does remain that even a decade or more of measurements is insufficient to detect climate change of ~0.2°C/decade. Remember this when you see the endless claims that ‘global warming stopped in X’! These claims are based on statistical ignorance, and you may also notice that X constantly shifts forward. X used to be 1998. 2002 is now pretty common, and I’ve recently seen 2005 put forward. All these claims are wrong.
“Finally, if you are looking for temperature increases from CO2 in the atmosphere, then you should choose the satellite approach of measuring temperatures in the atmosphere!”
This statement is completely unsupported by anything presented here.
“Short term, less than thirty years, temperature series are not the place to seek evidence of human induced global warming.”
The analysis is incomplete. It has been shown that over the last 12 years, no trend in global temperatures can be measured (though you only got the right answer by chance as your method was wrong). It has not been shown that the same is true over 30 years.

I think this is a good, rational analysis of recent temperatures.
Comparing UAH and Hadcrut3 from 1979 to 2008 I get ~0.20 to 0.25C greater warming in Hadcrut3, or ~0.07 per decade, essentially identical to the above for the most recent ~decade (0.11 – 0.04 = 0.07C). See Fig. 1 athttp://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I have assumed that this difference is due to UHI, etc., as per McKitrick and Michaels recent paper and Anthony et al’s excellent work on “weather stations from hell” (or less critically, “weather stations from heck” – after all, we haven’t summarized third-world weather stations yet, have we?).
What is perhaps equally interesting is that there has been no net warming since ~1940, in spite of an ~800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions.
See the first graph athttp://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774
I find all this anxiety about humanmade global warming to be rather undignified, to say the least. It is the result of the current state of innumeracy in the general populace, and says more about the hysterical tendencies of those who advocate for CO2 reduction than it does about the science itself, which provides no evidence for their irrational fears.
Then there are those darker types who would seek to profit from these irrational fears, and have chosen to exacerbate rather than calm the disquiet of the general populace.
In summary, the current movement to curtail CO2 emissions is unsupported by science, but is strongly supported by scoundrels and imbeciles.
Regards to all, Allan :^)

I wonder how many people realise how much this AGW hoax is likely to cost them?
In testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year, Peter Orszag, Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, admitted that a 15 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions would reduce American incomes. According to Orszag, the lowest quintile of households would pay an average of $680 more each year for goods and services (3.3 percent of their incomes) and the highest quintile would pay $2,180 more (1.7 percent of their incomes) than they would have in the absence of carbon rationing.http://www.reason.com/news/show/133572.html

Many here might be interested in the excellent discussion found at http://tinyurl.com/oyrj3e.
The author takes great pains to fully document each graph and the reasoning for each presentation. As new information is provided, each of the graphs is updated and these updates are carefully documented.
With all the talk about the differences between the various temperature data sets, it is remarkable how closely they match each other and seem to say the same story.
Climate4You also avoids the charge of ‘cherry picking’ data. All the data is made available, from 1979 forward for the satellite data, 1958 for the Mauna Loa CO2 data, 1850 for the HADCRUT3 data, and so forth.
Its fairly clear CO2 is not driving temperatures for the planet. It is also clear the trends over the last ten years or so have proven to be an embarrassment for those advocating such a connection.
Climate4You is my second favorite site on climate issues, after WUWT.
Regards to all.

I wonder how many people realise how much this AGW hoax is likely to cost them?

Along those same lines, a good read here:http://tinyurl.com/p5wbfx
Keith Rattie, CEO of Questar, delivered a speech to a student gathering about what was facing their generation. Many excellent points, including the fact a switch to the now abundant supply of natural gas, will result in significant reductions in this nation’s carbon footprint, without resorting to massive tax increases. By the way, this natural gas was found and is being developed in spite of the open hostility of the environmental community.
Some observations made by Keith:

My perspective on global warming changed when I began to understand the limitations of the computer models that scientists have built to predict future warming. If the only variable driving the earth’s climate were manmade CO2 then there’d be no debate – global average temperatures would increase by a harmless one degree over the next 100 years. But the earth’s climate is what engineers call a “non-linear, dynamic system”. The models have dozens of inputs. Many are little more than the opinion of the scientist – in some cases, just a guess. The sun, for example, is by far the biggest driver of the earth’s climate. But the intensity of solar radiation from the sun varies over time in ways that can’t be accurately modeled.
Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that’s absurd, but I digress.] Some scientists believe clouds amplify human CO2 forcing, others believe precipitation acts as the earth’s thermostat. But scientists do not agree on how to model clouds, precipitation, and evaporation, thus there’s no consensus on this fundamental issue.

And the costs?

Reality 3: You can argue about whether global warming is a serious problem or not, but there’s no argument about the consequences of cap and trade regulation – it’s going to drive the cost of energy painfully higher. That’s the whole point of cap and trade – to drive up the cost of fossil energy so that otherwise uneconomic “alternatives” can compete. Some put the total cost of cap and trade to U.S. consumers at $2 trillion over the next decade and $6 trillion between now and 2050 – not to mention the net loss of jobs in energy-intensive industries that must compete in global markets.

The 140% error bar is not the problem. It only reflects the fact that the variation was very small. If the mean approaches zero of course the percent error will approach high values.
If the trend in temperature were on the order of 1 C, or higher, per decade, 10 years would be enough to detect it.

EM Smith
Dont forget there is some civilisation in the Southern Hemisphere including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa etc and that these long lost civilisations actually have some reasonably long climate records.

“In summary, the current movement to curtail CO2 emissions is unsupported by science, but is strongly supported by scoundrels and imbeciles.”

That says it all. Imbeciles can learn the truth; they won’t sit on a hot stove twice. Scoundrels are identified by their insistence that black is white, down is up, evil is good — and that global warming causes global cooling. They know the truth, but like all scoundrels they have ulterior motives.
The great thing about this site is that the few scoundrels posting here have apparently not converted one skeptic to their way of thinking — while at the same time, we routinely read about those who formerly bought into the belief that CO2=AGW, but who now understand that the real world evidence doesn’t support that mistaken conjecture.
With all the empirical data that has been made available over the last few years, people are beginning to grasp the fact that a change in a minor trace gas, from 4 parts in ten thousand to 5 parts in ten thousand, will not and can not cause runaway global warming. And if CO2 is benign, which it is, then there is no reason to spend one more penny on the global warming scam.
As you correctly note, the central question in the entire debate is over the [non] effect of CO2 on global temps. Without the CO2 boogeyman to scare the populace with, the entire CO2=AGW house of cards comes tumbling down.
Even as global temperatures continue their steady decline, there are still some true believers trying to convince the readership of the “Best Science” site that a *very* minor trace gas is the culprit. But the planet itself is proving them wrong.

John Finn (01:29:56) :
“we cannot say whether global warming is continuing”
So doesn’t that put the AGW community in a spot given that CO2 has continued to rise inexorably?
Why should law makers pass a bill that is going to cost Americans over $1,000 p.a. [at least] if the theory is not standing up in the real world?

John Finn (01:29:56) : “.. while we cannot say whether global warming is continuing, we most definitely cannot say that the earth is cooling.”
From atmospheric data – correct. But from ocean temperatures (body of the ocean not just the surface layer) we can tell if the Earth is warming or cooling. The Earth is warming (cooling) if the rate at which heat is leaving the planet is less (greater) than the rate at which heat is coming in [AGW is all about CO2 reducing the rate at which heat leaves the planet]. If the Earth is warming (cooling) then under the basic laws of physics the heat must exist (come from) somewhere. The only relevant heat body of sufficient size is the ocean. Hence we can tell if the Earth is warming or cooling if we can detect warming or cooling in the oceans.
The oceans are indeed cooling …Cazenave, A., et al., Sea level budget over 2003–2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry and Argo, Glob. Planet. Change (2008), Doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.10.004Loehle, 2009: “Cooling of the global ocean since 2003.″ Energy & Environment, Vol. 20, No. 1&2, 101-104(4)
… or not warming …Willis, J. K., D. P. Chambers, and R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517.Leuliette, E. W., and L. Miller (2009), Closing the sea level rise budget with altimetry, Argo, and GRACE, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04608, doi:10.1029/2008GL036010. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3400/3428934674_a9512a4fbe.jpghttp://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/dipuccio-2.jpg
There is a good analysis on Roger Pielke Sr’s website here :http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
TonyB (01:32:21) : “A 140% error was mentioned. Surely you can’t possibly begn to accept data with this degree of error.”
It’s a high % only because it’s relative to a low figure. “0.1 +- 0.14” is IMHO a better way of expressing it. It does tell you that the actual rise is unlikely to be over 0.24 or under -0.04 – still useful information.

Does anyone show temperatures after making the adjustments to false high readings due to improper siting”?
With most of the stations situated so that they get high readings, is it possible for someone more adept than I to produce a graph that would incorporate the false higher temperatures and provide accurate temperatures?

E.M.Smith (01:53:38) :
One of the major issues in detecting “climate change” (which usually really means 30 year plus weather) is that we have not got a decent global scale history of temperatures for any length of time. We have the thermometers concentrated in the USA, Europe, and Japan (to a lessor extent) and if you go back in the historical record at all, it’s even more sparse.
You sir, have hit the nail squarely upon its head.
We don’t really know if the 1930s were warmer than the 1990s, nor do we know that the MWP was warmer than the 20th century. We don’t know they weren’t, either.

With PDO cycles running at 30 years or so, it appears to me the only way to measure climate is over at least four of those cycles. I suspect the 30 standard for measuring ‘climate’ lead to the misperception that climate is/was changing outside normal variation. The warm, current and fading, PDO that began in the mid-70s was misidentified as climate change, as was the cool PDO from the mid-40s.

I also believe that AGW’s are not being deliberately dishonest. However, I will accuse them of having a God complex. This is true of may boondoggles of the recent and distant past. The leaders of said boondoggles always manage to gather a large group of well-meaning people around the event from all walks of life. The problem is stated and believed. A solution event is proposed. The event occurs. It appears in first generation history books as a heroic thing, and then only in subsequent generations is it described for what it was in the beginning, a boondoggle, or words to that affect. This cycle will repeat itself. There is no learning opportunity here that can be passed on to the next generation. It is the human species’ most consistently repeated behavior.

From the article:
“Finally, if you are looking for temperature increases from CO2 in the atmosphere, then you should choose the satellite approach of measuring temperatures in the atmosphere!”
This is a good point, thankyou.
The expected hot spot in around 5-15 km hight in the atmosphere is just not there. In fact in April-may 2008-9 the 400mb 7,5 km UAH was around 0,5K under the 1998-2007 level. What a hot-spot.

QUoting:
“nor do we know that the MWP was warmer than the 20th century.”
Commenting:
Except that we find frozen stumps of bristle cone pines well above the modern tree line that date to the MWP and we have historical records of Vikings living and growing crops in areas of Greenland where now it would not be possible.
You could say that we don’t “know” that Issac Newton existed, unless we read his books.

FWIW, I still don’t think the concept of an “Average” temperature is all that useful. The average can be affected by a higher/lower high, higher/lower low, or whatever combination of the two. As someone in production Ag, it makes all the difference what might be moving the averages. I wanna see plots of highs/lows/averages, to compare, but you never see this info. It would make the averages much more meaningful.

““nor do we know that the MWP was warmer than the 20th century.””
Well, maybe not the MWP But from Ancient Ice http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/ancientice.html
“The problem with the popular belief that millions of mammoths lived in very northerly regions around the entire globe, with estimates of up to 5 million living along a 600 mile stretch of Siberian coastline alone,39 is that these mammoths were still living in these regions within the past 10,000 to 20,000 years. Carbon 14 dating of Siberian mammoths has returned dates as early as 9670± 40 years before present (BP).41 So, why is this a problem?
Contrary to popular imagination, these creatures were not surrounded by the extremely cold, harsh environments that exist in these northerly regions today. Rather, they lived in rather lush steppe-type conditions to include evidence of large fruit bearing trees, abundant grasslands, and the very large numbers and types of grazing animals already mentioned only to be quickly and collectively annihilated over huge areas by rapid weather changes. Clearly, the present is far far different than even the relatively recent past must have been. Sound too far fetched?
Consider that the last meal of the famous Berezovka mammoth (see picture), found north of the Artic Circle, consisted of “twenty-four pounds of undigested vegetation” 39 to include over 40 types of plants; many no longer found in such northerly regions.43 The enormous quantities of food it takes to feed an elephant of this size (~300kg per day) is, by itself, very good evidence for a much different climate in these regions than exists today.39 Consider the following comment by Zazula et. al. published the June 2003 issue of Nature:”
I think this is why most geologists don’t seem to be on the AGW wagon.

Over long periods of time, glaciers will trend down very slowly and disappear. At the same time, in some areas, glaciers will grow. This regional variation is due to what? If you said anything other than wear and tear in the first case and uplift in the second, you would be thinking weather pattern variation, not climate change. Climate change happens when your GPS address moves into another zone. Any temperature noise faster than that is local and regional weather pattern variation. An overall average, if you desire a global average, would be more instructive than these arbitrary “average” baseline periods that are then compared to what is going on currently. Start as far back as the data allows, call it zero, then see what happens to the average as each additional year’s worth of noisy data is calculated into the average.

Even if we accept that all of the temperature records we have actually show what the various agencies purport, there is no evidence that any of them, in part or in whole, are directly or indirectly affected by the CO2 concentration at any point in time, or over the entire period.

Anthony, totally off thread, but right now, in Perth West OZ, we have a large anticyclone SW of Perth. Is there something developing antipodal to this in your hemisphere? BOM synoptic charts are nice but mean little in terms of the global situation.
I predict that, in spherical geometry terms, a hurricane is starting to develop in your area of the world.
I don’t have time to check responses here, so any comments should be directed to my email.

DR (06:02:26) :
What makes anyone think satellites don’t pick up urbanization and land use change effects in their data?
Of course they do. After all, UHI is an observed, measured phenomenon. However, the satellites are measuring the entire surface area. The difficulty with GISS is that the data/measurements available are biased toward UHI areas. The entire purpose of http://www.surfacestations.org is documenting the location and quality of that instrumentation. One of the by products is revealing the bias.

10-yr regressional “trends” are hardly indicative of anything secular. They are inappropriate linear least-squares fits to oscillatory data. Even 30-yr LLS slopes are too variable to qualify as credible secular trends. We need to get out to time-scales well over a century before interdecadal variabilty is suppessed in the LLS estimate. And we need bona fide historical data that genuinely represents measurements, instead of the “homogenized” data sausages that we’re beeing fed.

Another great example of why debate and discourse is crucial to the subject at hand. The data can be manipulated to prove whatever one chooses to prove. We slowly move forward through open discussion, and many minds working on the issue give fresh perspective. ” The debate is over” is one of the most ridiculous statement ever made (second only to climate change). Also the most damaging to mankind. Interesting that it comes from people who claim to want to be the saviors of us all. While I am confident that time and reality will vindicate my viewpoints, I will not say with absolute certainty that I am “correct”, for that is only hubris. My blood boils when I hear things like ” The basic mechanism (burning carbon -> increased CO2 -> increased heat retention -> global warming) is so obviously valid”. No, it isn’t.

Mike Jonas (05:49:41) :
Re: your post
If the oceans are indeed cooling then it will eventually become evident in the surface and satellite record. You refer to Roger Pielke. My understanding is that Roger says the oceans are “not warming” which is not necessarily the same thing as “cooling”.

/sarcasm on
Well, upon observing and reflecting upon the temperature trends, it is clear to me that there is indeed a CLIMATE CRISIS! And that burning fossil fuels is CLEARLY to blame – the “smoking gun” is right there for your very eyes to see! Science!
/sarcasm off
BTW our this foregoing view was essentially put forth by the President of the US here:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Arnold-Missouri-Town-Hall/
The relevant money quote from President Obama:
“So this is no joke. And the science shows that the planet is getting warmer faster than people expected. Even the most dire warnings, it’s gotten — it’s moved forward faster than anybody expected. They’re talking about, just in a few years, during the summer, there won’t be any ice in the Arctic, something we have never seen before. So we have to do something about it.”
Now, I’m sure Obama (or his advisers) have look at the surface temperature data above and concluded that the warming is moving “faster than anybody expected.” “Even the most dire warnings..”
It is all so clear…right?

Re global warming and policy making. If the standard deviation is larger than the apparent trends being discussed, this reflects the physical fact that the actual trend, if there is one, is almost imperceptable. We therefore can afford the time to wait, say 30 or 40 years before we need to make up our mind what the trend is and what we should do about it.

Jack Simmons (04:00:53) :
Keith Rattie, CEO of Questar, delivered a speech to a student gathering about what was facing their generation.
Some observations made by Keith:
Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that’s absurd, but I digress.]
That is one hell of a strong point — and I hadn’t thought of it. Thanks for the ammo.

You will have, for sure, a hot summer, warm enough to justify all the GWR marketing furiously, so you got be strong, this one will be one of the last battles if not the last one, before next minimum, and “they” know it. They won’t lose this almost last oppotunity…They have the money, the media and the cheated masses that follow them, so WUWT, the almost lonely beacon of truth, will have to try crossing that soot storm unharmed.

“”” Miles (23:20:27) :
This whole thing confuses the heck out of me. I think there needs to be an international grid standard of definable points ( every 5 minutes around the globe ) that are measured upon at definable intervals ( hourly ) and in 3 dimensions and get the stinking data. The temperature at any defineable point in the grid should independently verified and then there can be no debate on the temapeature differentials between points in time. “””
Have you calculated how many measuring stations that is ? And what do you do over the oceans does your grid stay localised with the solid planet or with the meandering water on top.
At some point you have to decide whether to measure surface temperatures or air temperatures (is that lower troposphere?).
It seems to me that Anthony’s errant owl boxes, are measuring air temperatures, and all the ancient history record data over the ocean were measuring water temperatures; and that was water from some arbitrary depth; wherever a bucket thrown overboard stopped sinking; then it became water from some arbotrary depth wherever some ship happened to have it’s cooling water intake; and of course depending on how loaded the ship was at the time.
Of course in Jan 2001 it was reported that ocean buoy measurements made at a fixed depth of one metre in the water, and a fixed height of three metres in the air showed that the water temperatures and the air temperatures are not correlated; which means that the air temperatures are not recoverable form hisorical water temperatures. Since that buoy data started around 1980; we can deduce that any historic ocean temperature data prior to 1980 is total garbage.
So that means we actually have measured global temperature data, only since3 about 1980, about the same time frame that we have for the polar orbit satellite data, that gives us Ice records.
It seems to me that the earth’s surface is the primary source of the emitted long wave IR radiation; not the atmosphere; so it would seem that surface temperatures are what should be measured; not air temperatures.
So that makes all the oceanic water data, and all the land based air data; to be somewhat meaningless.
I suppose the satellites can read sea surface temperatures; but the whole sampling process seems hoky to me.
And of course it is not very meaningful after you get it; about as meaningful as averaging the phone numbers in yourt local phone directory.
Well what does it matter so long as the taxpayers keep paying you to measure whatever it is you measure.

Latest Ocean Heat Content Numbers from National Oceanographic Data Centre, and published in GRL are here.
Levelling off? Maybe. Cooling? nope. Besides, it would take a long, steep and sustained cooling trend to lose all that heat gained since 1955…

NewScientist mentions another difference between Hadley and GISS:
According to the dataset of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre,…1998 was the warmest year by far since records began, but since 2003 there has been slight cooling.
But according to the dataset of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies…2005 was the warmest since records began, with 1998 and 2007 tied in second place.
Why the difference? The main reason is that there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, the place on earth that has been warming fastest. The Hadley record simply excludes this area, whereas the NASA version assumes its surface temperature is the same as that of the nearest land-based station.

Phillip Johns (13:00:00):
It would take very little time to show that the Levitus et al. “corrections” of XBT measurements and their exclusion of inconvenient Argus data is what produces “all that heat gained since 1955.”

Philip Johns
Thanks. Interesting link.ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
My first thought is how they can have such accurate measurements back to 1955 and are we comparing the same data up to the present date.
This from first para of the pdf;
“We provide estimates of the warming of the world ocean
for 1955–2008 based on historical data not previously
available, additional modern data, correcting for instrumental
biases of bathythermograph data, and correcting or excluding
some Argo float data. The strong interdecadal variability of
global ocean heat content reported previously by us is reduced
in magnitude but the linear trend in ocean heat content remain
similar to our earlier estimate.”
Whatever the oceanic equivalent of sticking a finger in the air is, this is surely it. I am willing to listen to your explanation as to why this study is thought to be so acurate when it is based on such adjusted data and the authors are saying their first go had flaws in it.
Tonyb

Not an easy article for me to follow (I am not a scientist), but I can agree with Dr. Quirk’s conclusion that satellites would be the better measuring stick for atmospheric temperature anomalies than ground-based stations. The ground-based stations, because of the way they currently are so oddly and poorly placed by NOAA’s own standards (kudos to you, Anthony, for pointing that out to all of us on a daily basis), add just way too many additional variables to make me believe that they can properly adjust the measurements to compensate adequately for these additional variables.

Mike Jonas
You replied to my post;
TonyB (01:32:21) : “A 140% error was mentioned. Surely you can’t possibly begn to accept data with this degree of error.”
With your comment
“It’s a high % only because it’s relative to a low figure. “0.1 +- 0.14″ is IMHO a better way of expressing it. It does tell you that the actual rise is unlikely to be over 0.24 or under -0.04 – still useful information.”
Mike, It may still be useful information but its different information 🙂
TonyB

This has filled in a lot of my understanding of the differences in the four series, and explained why I always got an uneasy feeling about the data. This has confirmed my suspicion that despite or because of the manipulation the errors would be bigger than the slope of the overall trend, and that is indeed the case. Thank You.

>What happened to the fifth data set; that of NCDC/NOAA?
This was an attempt to discredit GISS. Given NCDC and GISS are very similar and HadCRU is the outlier at the surface including NCDC would have blown the story.
“Sceptic” science at work.

“Of course in Jan 2001 it was reported that ocean buoy measurements made at a fixed depth of one metre in the water, and a fixed height of three metres in the air showed that the water temperatures and the air temperatures are not correlated”
Reported by whom, and where?

There is a debate going on between two of the bigger blogs out there: Jim Manzi at the Corner and Patrick Appel at the Daily Dish. Appel makes the following comment that is not disputed by Manzi, and I was wondering if anyone here cared to comment:
“It is just absurd to claim that “the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 7 or 8 years” when the 2010s will easily be the hottest decade on record (see “Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far“). Also, the warmest year on record was 2005, according to the U.S. temperature dataset that best measures total planetary warming, the one from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (see here)”http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDExMTcyNDA4NzU0ODYyMDNlZGI5YjIyOTY0YTc3YzI=

debate (16:49:13)…………continuing from Francis(14:12:52)….NewScientist:
It is possible that the NASA approach underestimates the rate of warming in the Arctic Ocean, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that the Hadley record is the most accurate reflection of changes in global surface temperatures. Doesn’t it show that the world has cooled since the warmth of 1998, as many claim.
Not necessarily. The Hadley record is based only on surface teemperatures, so it reflects only what’s happening to the very thin layer where air meets the land and sea.
In the long term, what matters is how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet – what the climate scientist’s call the “top of the atmosphere” radiation budget – and falling surface temperatures do not prove that the entire planet is losing heat… …
…The reason is that the outer atmosphere, the stratosphere is cooler because we’ve added more “clothing” to the lower atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide…
…As a result, the planet is gaining as much heat from the sun as usual but losing less heat every year as greenhouse gas levels rise…
…How do we know? Because the oceans are getting warmer…
.

John Finn (08:37:06) : “If the oceans are indeed cooling then it will eventually become evident in the surface and satellite record.”
Yes.
“You refer to Roger Pielke. My understanding is that Roger says the oceans are “not warming” which is not necessarily the same thing as “cooling”.”
The difference is in the time period. Cooling from 2006. No net warming from 2003.http://climatesci.org/2009/01/07/sea-level-budget-over-2003%E2%80%932008-a-reevaluation-from-grace-space-gravimetry-satellite-altimetry-and-argo-by-cazenave-et-al-2008/
George E. Smith (11:37:51) : “It seems to me that the earth’s surface is the primary source of the emitted long wave IR radiation; not the atmosphere; so it would seem that surface temperatures are what should be measured; not air temperatures.
So that makes all the oceanic water data, and all the land based air data; to be somewhat meaningless.”
Not so. As I explained in an earlier post, global warming is all about the imbalance between incoming and outgoing heat, and hence total heat content. Total heat content cannot be obtained from atmospheric or surface temperatures (land or ocean) because they are not measuring heat content of the main heat body. The main heat body wrt climate is the ocean.
Philip Johns (13:00:00) : “Levelling off? Maybe. Cooling? nope. Besides, it would take a long, steep and sustained cooling trend to lose all that heat gained since 1955”
I have no idea how reliable your linked NODC graph is, compared with other studies. I would agree with your interpretation of it. You would get the same from the Willis and Leuliette papers that I referenced in an earlier post. However, the Cazenave and Loehle papers clearly show cooling in recent years. Take your pick. As Pielke pointed out, the IPCC computer models are invalidated if non-warming occurs for more than about 4 years (net cooling is not needed to invalidate the models).
The Cazenave paper is linked in the climatesci.org link (reply to John Finn above). The Loehle paper can be downloaded from http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3152 .
It has taken us 30 years to acquire the “heat gained since 1955“. You can’t expect to lose that much in 3 or 4 years.

Some observations made by Keith:
Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that’s absurd, but I digress.]
That is one hell of a strong point — and I hadn’t thought of it. Thanks for the ammo.

Using it for ammo will only show ignorance of how the two gases behave in the atmosphere. CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas that builds up in the atmosphere in response to fossil fuel emissions. By contrast, humans cannot currently emit water vapor on a scale that significantly influences its concentration in the atmosphere. The concentration of water vapor is essentially controlled by the temperature. It is only by raising temperatures through an increase in CO2 concentrations that humans can indirectly raise the level of water vapor in the atmosphere.
These scientific facts are often summarized by the statement that water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing.

John Finn (01:29:56) :
“we cannot say whether global warming is continuing”
So doesn’t that put the AGW community in a spot given that CO2 has continued to rise inexorably?

No…It just states the obvious, which is that when you have a system that has fluctuations superimposed on a long-term trend, one cannot accurately determine the trend without a long enough series of data.

debate (16:49:13) :
There is a debate going on between two of the bigger blogs out there: Jim Manzi at the Corner and Patrick Appel at the Daily Dish. Appel makes the following comment that is not disputed by Manzi, and I was wondering if anyone here cared to comment:
“It is just absurd to claim that “the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 7 or 8 years” when the 2010s will easily be the hottest decade on record (see “Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far“). Also, the warmest year on record was 2005, according to the U.S. temperature dataset that best measures total planetary warming, the one from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (see here)”http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDExMTcyNDA4NzU0ODYyMDNlZGI5YjIyOTY0YTc3YzI=
____________________________
Hi debate:
They quote the GISS Surface Temperature (ST) average for the past decade, which says nothing about the trend within that decade, up or down. The current decade is near the top if a cyclical temperature curve so its average will tend to be high, compared to past and future decades.
As I and others have said, it is wrong to take the tangent to an arbitrary point on a cyclical curve, erroneously assume linearity, and then project that linearity far into the future. THAT is absurd.
Also, they are relying on ST data without allowing for the ~UHI (etc) effect of ~0.07C per decade, as described further below.
2008 was about the same average global temperature as 1940, according to the first graph athttp://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774
(using Hadcrut3 ST data for 1940 to 1979 and superior Lower Troposphere LT data from 1979 to 2008).
You can also see the cyclical nature of Earth temperature from this graph, since it covers ~one complete PDO Cycle.
Note the divergence in ST and LT data over this ~30 year period to 2008 is ~0.2C, or 0.07C per decade. This is a reasonable measure of ~UHI effect (Urban Heat Island, land use changes, etc. etc.)
But my above statement that 1940 and 2008 exhibited similar average temperatures does not account for 4 decades of ~UHI effect in the Hadcrut3 ST data, so we can deduct another ~0.3C from the ST record from 1940 to 1979.
Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that 1940 was ~0.3C warmer, on average, than 2008.
Where’s the global warming?
A few other points:
Since 1940, humanmade CO2 emissions have increased ~800%, and there has been no net global warming.
Where’s the temperature sensitivity to increased CO2?
CO2 lags, does not lead, temperature at all known time scales. By saying CO2 drives temperature, one is in effect saying that the future is causing the past.
Where’s the logic?
Where’s the beef?
_________________________

In testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year, Peter Orszag, Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, admitted that a 15 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions would reduce American incomes. According to Orszag, the lowest quintile of households would pay an average of $680 more each year for goods and services (3.3 percent of their incomes) and the highest quintile would pay $2,180 more (1.7 percent of their incomes) than they would have in the absence of carbon rationing.http://www.reason.com/news/show/133572.html

Boy, Bailey (the author of that Reason article) has badly garbled Orszag’s testimony, which is available here: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/92xx/doc9276/05-20-Cap_Trade_Testimony.1.1.shtml or, better yet the original CBO study that it was based on here http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=2104&type=0&sequence=4 , you find that the numbers quoted are only the numbers for the costs due to the increases in the price of energy but ignore the fact that the selling of the allowances generates a lot of revenue, which can then be returned to the households in various ways. How it get returned determines the ultimate effect on the households but the net cost, what they call the “substitution cost” averages only ~$100 per household, roughly an order of magnitude less than those scare-values given.
To understand this best, look at Table 4 here http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=2104&type=0&sequence=4 which shows more-or-less the values that Bailey quotes [I think they are a little different because of some updating to 2006 constant dollars]; this table gives the costs associated with the increase in energy prices without factoring in the revenue generated from the sale of the allowances. Then compare this to Table 5 which shows what would happen for various scenarios of how the allowances are allocated and the money from them returned. For example, with the most progressive plan shown of an auction of allowances with a lump-sum rebate, the bottom quintile actually has an INCREASE in their after-tax income by 1.8%. The second quintile also comes out ahead. The top three quintiles have a decrease in after-tax income although even for the top quintile, the amount is only -0.9%.

I wonder how many people realise how much this AGW hoax is likely to cost them?

Well, the problem seems to be that there are a lot of people who are badly misrepresenting the costs to them as Bailey did. (I won’t say “lying” because it may have been an honest mistake on Bailey’s part. The subject is confusing and even Orszag’s testimony, although it sort of explains it, doesn’t make it as clear as the original CBO study.)

Joel Shore (20:07:32) : I think most people would prefer to keep their $680 to $2,180, than rely on it being “returned to the households in various ways” and not disappear into Washington and the green machine. And if it is going to be returned to them, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in taking it from them in the first place.

It certainly IS interesting to see that the actual data shows no warming. If you dive deeper into the rabbit hole, you will see that it even shows COOLING. Around 1975, scientists were panicked about another ice age. Then they were shouting warming….and now cooling again!
Thanks for posting.

Some of the anomalies noted aren’t even anomalies at all. The problem with the temperature’s anomalies don’t take all into consideration. When in 1957 the start for the analyse of water in Lake Vaettern’s watersystem down to the Baltic Sea started, one of the analyse parameters was temperature, others were Ph-value, visibility down in lake/river etc, biologic analyse and chemical analyse of watercontent etc. For the temperature analyse three values were needed: One in air aprox. 2 meters above waterlevel. One 2 meter down from waterfront in the lake/river etc. the last reading each time was from 2 meters above the ‘seafloor’ in lake/river tested.
Now there were two observations that have stringens for other temperature readings around our world. The oceans and lake systems represent more than 70% of the Earth’s surface. When measuing above water or in water 1-2 meter down there always are ‘anomalies’ when ever the surface of water saw ‘fresh’ water. In other words during or after rain the temperatures always showed anomalies from what’s expected due to earlier readings. Secondly the wind speed as well as the speed of waterstream weren’t a constant factor thus that too could have an impact.
As for the 12 years series shown above I just wonder which mean been used? I have looked closer into mean values measured on land and I have seen so called scholars using different means in same study to make their case 🙂

John Finn (08:37:06) : “If the oceans are indeed cooling then it will eventually become evident in the surface and satellite record.”

Yes.

“You refer to Roger Pielke. My understanding is that Roger says the oceans are “not warming” which is not necessarily the same thing as “cooling”.”

The difference is in the time period. Cooling from 2006. No net warming from 2003
What happened between 1975 and 1985 then? Clearly there was no increase in OHC, but that didn’t stop air temperatures rising, and it didn’t a significant 20 year increase in OHC in the Post-1985 period.
You’re calling this ‘result’ far too early. I realise you’re desperate for evidence which contradicts AGW, but that is some way off yet. As for “cooling since 2006” you’ll be telling us next it’s been cooling since last week.

The analysis for the last ten years[ rather than 1997-2008 is also similar
LEAST SQUARES TREND LINE SLOPES GLOBAL TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES LAST TEN YEARS – 1999-2009
GISS 0.01868 C/year
UAH 0.01212 C/year
RSS 0.01048 C/year
CRU 0.00721 C/year [hadcrut3]
COMPOSITE 0.01198/year [WOOD FOR TREES Temperature index]
All these temperature anomaly trend line slopes went negative or starting to show cooling trend starting in 2001 or the last 8 years as shown below
GISS -0.001360 C/year
RSS -0.001588 C/year
UAH -0.013737 C/year
HADCRUT3vgl -0.012197 C/year
The interesting note about the HADCRUT 3 figure is that it is almost identical to the slope for the period 1900-2009, namely 0.00727 C/year , so where is all the global warming that AWG science claims?.
I think it is wrong to accept that extra global warming or cooling as a trend must last for 30 years or that we need that many years to declare a long term trend .These climate cycle durations are all over the place and 30 years is not the norm.
Extra Global warming lasted only about 13-14 years from 1994-2008 and is no longer happening. Similar warming took place in the period 1926-1944 .Global warming started to decline in the oceans in 2000 and atmospherically in 2001 as measured by least squares trend line slopes.

And if it is going to be returned to them, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in taking it from them in the first place.

Because if the costs of something are not internalized into its price then the assumptions of an ideal market don’t apply and people will be inefficient…i.e., they will use more of it than they would if the assumptions of market economics applied. Right now, people are not directly paying the full costs of the fossil fuel energy that they are using.

Allan Macrae
The quote that you referenced
“It is just absurd to claim that “the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 7 or 8 years” when the 2010s will easily be the hottest decade on record ”
The analogy might be like this . What is the overall latest trend despite short term up and downs? Are we still climbing up the mountain or coming down generally. When we are quite high and coming down we may still be relatively high and have periodic changes in elevations and hit record personal heights, but our overall trend is coming down for the next several decades perhaps . The period 1994-2008 had record highs due to the simultaneous warm phases of PDO and AMO but the overall trend was coming down since 2001. Both of these indices are negative or cool now . Could they reverse? Possibly in short terms but unlikely in the constant mode in the longer term[2-3 decades] in my opinion.
The monthly trend is supported by annual numbers which are also down for the last several years.
I don’t think that the 2010’s will be the hottest on record even though you may have some isolated warm years in between. There is a very long term trend to our climate since the last ice age and this is up very gradually. So long term wise we seem to be still climbing at 0.72C per century

Joel 5 47 53
Great to read you again. Liked your comments on the ham slicer thread.
We have all had this dicussion on global cooling before. I am delighted to show my green credentials by recycling a part of the previous thread on this subject.
“Brendan H at 02 51 57 said
“As for William Connolly, the paper he co-authored on the myth of the 1970s cooling consensus presents a persuasive and well-supported argument. I think you should give it another chance.http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf “
I replied;
I have seen this article before in another form- the three authors are interesting including William Connelly-on whom I did a long and thorough piece about his personal agenda as a member of the UK Green party and as gatekeeper of wikipedia climate section (my 01 14 54 earlier today addressed to Joel and Smokey)
The second author was Thomas Peterson, who Anthony has met;http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:xpjH07lfElgJ:wattsupwiththat.com/2007/06/30/+thomas+peterson+noaa+politics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk
Thomas Peterson is the keeper of weather records including weather stations at NOAA Anthony records being co interviewed with him
When trying to continue his surface stations project shortly after this meeting he found;
“You are not authorized to view this information. Your IP address has been logged”
When it came back up Monday afternoon, the “managing parties” field identifying the location of the weather station was gone. I would note that I shared a radio interview with Dr. Thomas Peterson of NCDC last week, so I am certain NCDC is aware of the effort. No notification was given, nor even a professional courtesy to advise of the change, nor any notice on the website.”
The Row over access was repeated in more detail herehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1879848/posts
The third author of the piece you cite is John Fleck who is a competent science writer on the Albuquerque journal- he reported his own involvement in the article here;http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/1897180018opinionguestcolumns02-18-09.htm
His politics are left wing -which is his own business- but the reports he co authors need to be seen against that background.
The original report you cite is rebutted herehttp://www.openmarket.org/2008/12/09/the-new-ice-age-continued/
For my part I had an involvement, in as much back in the 70’s I was asked to write a piece on climate change and being unaware at that time what was being referred to, collected material from both ‘sides’. There were undoubtedly far more pieces citing cooling rather than warming-whether they survived as digital copies anywhere –and therefore are still being cited-depends on who the record keeper was at the time. I threw away my files years ago and recall the flimsy folder with warming material and the very thick bunch of folders on cooling.
The article you cite makes some interesting comments including;
“Scientists teasing apart the details of Mitchell’s temperatures found it (cooling) was not necessarily a global phenomenon.”
Mitchell had based his calculations on 200 weather stations for his 1963 treatise. Interestingly this was the same number (and appears to be the same ones) that G S Callendar based his work on when he came up with the seminal document on AGW being caused by rising co2 levels back in 1938. He had based his own work by backtracking to 1850 to show rising temperatures and found only 100 weather stations of which some 50 were flawed and unreliable. Interestingly Charles Keeling admitted to being influenced by Callendars work so based his own hypotheses on the basis that temperatures were rising and so was co2-this latter supposition based on Callendars cherry picking of historical co2 data.
It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth. It wasn’t. To base a new world order on a tiny number of historical temperature records- many of which were known to be flawed then and are flawed to this day- is clearly absurd.
Sorry Brendan, but the report you cite could easily be rewritten to show a diametrically opposite view and if anyone here would like to fund it I shall be happy to oblige”
Joel-still waiting for the offer of funding. around $250,000 dollars a year should do it 🙂
Best regards
TonyB

DJ: You wrote, “This was an attempt to discredit GISS. Given NCDC and GISS are very similar and HadCRU is the outlier at the surface including NCDC would have blown the story.”
It was? They are? It would? Hmm. I’ve read the post a few times, and all of the data providers discussed in it were portayed in a good light. Please identify what part of the post was an attempt to discredit GISS. Please show what part of the story would’ve been blown had NCDC been included. Feel free to plot the data and include links to it so you can prove your point.

“”” Joel Shore (19:12:44) :
Frederick Michael says:
Some observations made by Keith:
Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that’s absurd, but I digress.]
That is one hell of a strong point — and I hadn’t thought of it. Thanks for the ammo.
Using it for ammo will only show ignorance of how the two gases behave in the atmosphere. CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas that builds up in the atmosphere in response to fossil fuel emissions. By contrast, humans cannot currently emit water vapor on a scale that significantly influences its concentration in the atmosphere. The concentration of water vapor is essentially controlled by the temperature. It is only by raising temperatures through an increase in CO2 concentrations that humans can indirectly raise the level of water vapor in the atmosphere.
These scientific facts are often summarized by the statement that water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing. “””
Come on Joel you can’t believe what you just wrote.
>>>humans cannot currently emit water vapor on a scale that significantly influences its concentration in the atmosphere.<<<
Every gas burning automobile emits about as much water vapor as it does CO2.
And as for longevity; water vapor is at least as long lived as CO2 is. It is true that water vapor in the atmosphere varies considerably more than does CO2 over short periods of time; but only rarely does water vapor content of the atmosphere drop to the level that CO2 is at. Even at the lowest humidities, water vapor swamps CO2 levels. Even at Vostok base, they routinely show the dew point only a few degrees below the ambient temperature.
And for a GHG to operate in the atmosphere it only needs to be present for about one millisecond to intercept outgoing photons; so quit trying to sell that longevity red herring; water is a permanent component of the atmosphere in quantities sufficient to swamp any CO2 or other GHG effect.
And I would like a dollar for every time some AGWer says water vapor is a feedback and not a forcing. What total drivel; the atmospheric warming process of long wave IR absorption by atmospheric trace molecules is exactly the same for water vapor as it is for CO2; and once the atmosphere has warmed by that process; the effect on the surface such as oceans or other water bodies is quite independent of what species caused the atmospheric warming.
It's time to abandon that feedback crutch Joel, because it just won't support you much longer.
You know the answer as well as I do; carbon taxing provides the Marxist controlling mechanism that the political left seeks over our lives; and they can't see how to get the gullible to buy into the same claims for water.
Carbon is dirty and black a la coal dust; but nice clean water is natural and beautiful; and couldn't possibly be harmful to the environment.
Well neither can CO2.
I have a cartoon picture you would like Joel. It depicts a high cliff with a couple of Pterodactyls soaring about high in the air. A cave man is about to launch himself off the cliff with a couple of appendages attached to his head; a forward, and a backward cone attachment to render his head shape pterodactyl like.
His soon to be alone buddy is saying: "Are you sure about this Stan? It seems odd that a pointy head, and long beak is what makes them fly !".
It's the same as cutting all four legs off a bullfrog; and concluding they become stone deaf; because they won't jump on command.
The thin ice you are standing on Joel, is shrinking about you as time goes by.
George

TonyB,
Good to see you again as always. Thanks for the information about the various authors of that paper but I don’t think it is particularly relevant to the correctness of their conclusion. You furthermore say:

Alas, that doesn’t rebut the Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck piece whatsoever. First of all, what it cites is a 1961 N.Y. Times article reporting on a meeting. However, Peterson et al. looked at a different time period, the one more often claimed to be associated with some global cooling scare (specifically they looked from 1965 to 1979). Furthermore, they were interested in the peer-reviewed literature, not what appeared in the popular press like the N.Y. Times…and they in fact admit that there were some poor articles in the popular press (although not all of the articles in the popular press were in the direction of cooling). Finally, the N.Y. Times article cited does not appear to warn about a future ice age…It just reports on what the temperature trend had been over the past year, which was indeed cooling at that time (although, as was later noted, the global cooling was really the result of a Northern Hemisphere cooling with pretty flat temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere). So, in fact, there doesn’t appear to be anything in that article that is in contradiction with modern understanding (at least from what those bloggers report…I did not pay the money to buy the whole article).
So, that “rebuttal” is no rebuttal at all for a variety of reasons. It is rather strange to see it even presented as any sort of rebuttal.

It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth. It wasn’t.

The myth is that there was any scientific consensus in regards to future global cooling. In fact, it is even a myth that there was more warning of cooling than warming in the peer-reviewed literature during that period. The point is that at that time, climate science was a very young field and there were various pieces of the puzzle that were being understood, e.g., that we were currently in an interglacial between ice ages, that greenhouse gases could cause warming, and that aerosol pollutants could cause cooling (although there was a minority that thought that they too could cause warming). However, there was no scientific consensus yet on how these different factors would play out in our future climate. This was stated clearly in the 1975 National Academy of Sciences report.

There were undoubtedly far more pieces citing cooling rather than warming-whether they survived as digital copies anywhere –and therefore are still being cited-depends on who the record keeper was at the time.

All the major scientific journals survive and are now, as far as I know, digitally archived nowadays. I’m sorry but the claim that these things have just disappeared is silly. I myself conducted a search of the journal that I had easy online access to, Science, and my less quantitative conclusions were completely in line with Peterson et al. (Judging from the articles that I looked at that they categorized, I think one could quibble with a few of their categorizations…I.e., they seemed to try hard to categorize articles as either warming or cooling and not put too many as neutral. I find a few articles on either the warming or cooling side that I would have categorized as neutral; indeed, I think the most notable thing about the papers in those days is that very few really took sides on the larger issue of predicting the future climate. But, I can understand their desire to categorize as many of the articles as possible one way or the other, so one should probably interpret their “warming” articles as meaning that they at least leaned a bit in the direction of warming or focussed on a particular mechanism that they said should cause warming and similarly for the “cooling” articles.)

George E. Smith,
I really don’t know how to respond to your post except to say that you really ought to try to understand the arguments that myself and the climate science community in general is making instead of attacking all sorts of strawmen.
It is completely irrelevant to this discussion whether or not water vapor ever gets down to as low concentrations as CO2 is at. (In fact, the higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is ONE of the reasons why the direct human influence on it through our emissions is negligible.)
Furthermore, how long a GHG has to be present in the atmosphere to intercept photons is also irrelevant. The point about the relative timescales for addition and removal of CO2 and water vapor is only relevant in explaining why we can directly influence the concentration of one in the atmosphere and not the other through our emissions.
And, the reason why water vapor is considered a feedback and not a forcing has nothing to do with any difference in the way in which it absorbs IR radiation. It simply has to do with the fact that we can directly influence the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through our emissions whereas we cannot directly influence the concentration of water vapor through our emissions (but only indirectly influence it because of the dependence of the concentration on the temperature).
In short, there is nothing in your post that addresses the actual issues that I raised and that are understood by nearly all scientists in the community. You are a smart person, George, but you really ought to consider the possibility that there are other smart people, including entire communities of scientists, and that you might learn from them. Instead of interpreting their arguments in ways that make no sense, you should try to understand what they are really saying.

It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth. It wasn’t.

You are correct. Connolley is re-writing history to suit his agenda.
And I don’t need to provide citations on this question [although I’ve provided plenty on this subject before]. How do I know your statement is correct? Because I was there, in my early 30’s, and working in a very big metrology lab, specifically on weather related instruments.
The instrument manufacturers provided our lab with the current literature, gratis. In addition, the media was full of global cooling scare stories. [Oh, OK, I’ll provide one cite: click.
The reason I know for a fact that the global cooling scare was constantly in the news is because I remember it so well. We discussed it in the lab whenever a big global cooling story came out.
And just like today, rent-seeking scientists and scientific organizations in the ’70’s concentrated on applying for grants — and they were likely to be much more successful if they included the message that they were studying ‘global cooling.’ Just like grant seeking organizations do today by using the magic words “global warming,” and “combating climate change.”
Scientists are not stupid; and they are human. Not all scientists actually believed in a coming ice age. But to pretend that the stated concern has always been about global warming is disingenuous and untrue. I’ve read Connolly’s pdf screed, and he is either a young ‘un, or he’s deliberately misrepresenting what went on in the ’70’s.
As you pointed out, much of the record has been lost because it was not archived. If it was archived, it was not collated in a central location. Today the internet takes care of that problem, but it would be hard work to track down a lot of the information. Connolley uses that situation to absolutely cherry-pick for his claim that global cooling wasn’t a scientific issue back then. It was. I was there, working in the field. And I remember.

Joel
Always a pleasure -You won’t ever tell anyone that I supported you once over one of Hansens codes that had been misrepresented by someone here will you? 🙂
I knew you would come back (we must stop meeting like this) so did not post the second part of the original post. Here it is again-Ah the green credentials I am gathering-soon I will be brave enough to take another peek at the Realclimate blog 🙂
I am not saying for a moment that there were any near as many articles back then on cooling as there is now on warming-different time. But to believe that everything was digitally archived that was written back then is somewhat fanciful. There would be a pecking order whereby the very top science organisations would archive the very top papers, but the likelihood of a smaller organisation digitising everything especially a relatively esoteric paper, becomes much more unlikely, so yes, they would have ‘disappeared’.
The major UK environmental organisation I work for did not routinely digitally archive their material until around 8 years ago. Any major report before then tends to be a closed book unless someone actually remembers it and drags out the physical copy. Not that easy as physical copies have often been discarded for reasons of space (or may have migrated to another form.
Some of this old material may have lived on in books-I will keep my eyes open in the seciond hand booshops.
Incidentally, whilst th repeated post below (sorry I’m being lazy tonight but its the onset of the hay fever season) was directed at Brendan H but I know you were listening in. (I’ve just remembered-I supported Brendan H on another thread AARRGGHH!)
repeat of Post;
“You said earlier that the report you linked to demolishing the myth surrounding Global cooling;
“…As for the opinions and activities of the report authors, I don’t see where they are relevant to my claim that their report “presents a persuasive and well-supported argument”.
I had made some very detailed anaysis suggesting that two of the three authors had an acknowleged warming agenda and the third-the keeper of the weather records- certainly did not appear as objective as he might, if the experience of others is anything to go by.
You then said;
“The authors identified seven papers claiming global cooling, 44 papers claiming global warming, plus a number of neutral papers. In other words, if there were any scientific consensus, it was in favour of warming. This finding is supported by an opinion survey carried out in 1977 of top climate scientists, who narrowly favoured warming over cooling.”
With respect Brendan the two statements do not correlate.
Let us for the sake of advancing the arguement (only) accept the poll at the time showed a narrow consensus in favour of warming, and for the sake of easy maths accept it was around 5%
Yet by the figures you cite around 80% of papers the three authors ‘found’ supported warming. Surely it is more reasonable the found figure would represent around 50/55%?
This suggests a number of possible explanations.
* The coolers didn’t write much
* The coolers documents were never digitised or became lost over time.
* The authors didn’t dig hard enough to find the true representation of papers that the poll shows should have been there.
Are you seriously saying a group of objective authors, seeking to present a well balanced argument, found only around 15/20% of the cooling papers, when statistically it should have been at least double or triple that number? In doing that is it really correct to say that they are presenting ‘a persuasive and well-supported argument?”
I suggest that the authors well known sympathies have prevented them from delving far enough to present anything that is balanced.
This is also so far from my own direct experience at the time as to exist in a parallel universe. Finding papers without the internet back in the 70’s was not easy and my own memory of writing my own article at the time is that I subsequently threw away far more than 7 cooling papers, and far fewer than 44 warming papers!
We will each continue to believe what we want, but it is only fair to point out that an important and widely cited report of this kind does need to be put into the context of the agenda behind those writing it.”
Back to the present, on a more serious note Joel, it would be good to genuinely spend enough time looking into this as a proper research project.-but that requires funding. I would not take the words of those committed to the irrationalist cause any more than you would accept the papers of (say)Ernst Beck.
It is a great shame that research is ordered in the way it is, whereby someone comes up with a pet theory then defends to the death their interpretation of the science. For example, with my interest in history I would have liked to have been sitting next to Michael Mann when he was manufacturing his sticks and said;
” Michael-errr you do know about the Roman Optimum and the MWP don’t you? How about a trip to Greenland?”
Always a pleasure to debate with you.
tonyb

Slightly OT, but…
Joel Shore (and others) – excellent discussion, but I have some concern about statements such as “…we can directly influence the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through our emissions…”
From what I’ve read in WUWT, my response would be something to the effect of, “Well…yes, no, and maybe, at least as I understand the situation.”
The reason I say that is that WUWT (and responders) in past posts have provided values for anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the order of 3% to 10% (Roy Spencer) of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. I think I remember one specific responder who quoted that the total CO2 emitted is somewhere on the order of 306 gigatons; of this total, human emissions constitute only 6 to 8 gigatons (~2.9%). The rest result from ocean degassing and natural decomposition products. If these data are reasonably close to being accurate, then, yes, human activity could conceivably directly influence CO2 ppm in the atmosphere, but how significantly is another question. I would think minimally.
Can anyone confirm or replace these values with generally accepted ones?

BobW in NC,
This may help:http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/eia_co2_contributions_table3.png
Keep in mind that the original data comes from the UN’s IPCC, and they have a vested financial interest in showing human CO2 emissions to be as high as possible. But it’s probably in the ball park, and it’s close to what you stated.
I probably sound like a broken record, because I keep coming back to the central issue: no one has shown any solid evidence that CO2 is harmful at current or projected concentrations. The only “evidence” comes from computer models. That’s not good enough to justify spending $trillions of tax dollars on Cap & Trade.
CO2 is not harmful, it is beneficial. And no one has shown otherwise.

BobW in NC:
Here is a diagram showing exchanges of carbon between various components: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg It is indeed true that there are large exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere and between the biosphere and the atmosphere. However, the key is that these exchanges have been nearly in balance since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 or so years ago…and even during the ice age – interglacial cycles, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere did not tend to change as rapidly as they have been doing recently.
Perhaps an analogy would be in order: Imagine that you are CEO of a supermarket chain and it has very thin profit margins…For simplicity, let’s say you sell everything at a 10% mark-up relative to the price that you buy it for, and because of your expenses in running the store, this means that you exactly break even. Let’s also say that you sell $100,000,000 in merchandise each year, which means that you buy $90,000,000 of stuff at wholesale and then your other expenses are $10,000,000. So, you run a break-even operation.
Now, suppose that an unscrupulous finance officer is hired who skims 3% off of the sales. So, then with no further adjustments, you would start losing $3,000,000 / year…and, of course, your losses would accumulate from year-to-year. Now, when you discover this and go to fire the officer, would you think it reasonable if he claimed that his contribution to your losses are negligible because you are paying out $90,000,000 to buy the merchandise (and another $10,000,000 to run the business) and compared to this, his siphoning off of only a few percent of this amount is a negligible contribution?
So, to make a long story short: Yes, there are large exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere and oceans and the atmosphere and biosphere. However, these do not cause a significant change in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. By contrast, we are taking a store of carbon that has long been locked away from the atmosphere and rapidly (on geological timescales at least) liberating it into the atmosphere. The study of the carbon cycle by scientists demonstrates that in fact we are responsible for essentially all of the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And, in fact it is only because the oceans…and to a lesser extent the biosphere…are now partially compensating for this by taking up more carbon than they emit that CO2 levels have not risen even faster. I.e., the increase in CO2 levels is only about half of what it would have been if all of the CO2 we had liberated through the burning of fossil fuels had remained in the atmosphere.

Smokey and Joel
As both you and Joel are hanging around this blog I would like to suggest something.
I personally welcome the input from Joel, Mary Hinge (where has she got to?) and RW in particular. They frequently respond to an article but we then tend to get fragmentary coments and not a coherent narrative. It would be most interesting to get a complerte article written by one of the above that WE could then critique. For my money I would like to see;
1) An explanation of just how doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C (without the use of magic or mirrors or the strewing of the runes)
2) The actual value and purpose of a global temperature, especially one dating to 1850 or 1880, bearing in mind the paucity of material and its subsequent unreliability.
3) Just how the rate of sea level ‘rise’ is going to accelerate to the height suggested by Hansen, when it is at best fairly static
I am sure there are lots of other topics. Anthony may be horrified by the suggestion, but allowing other people to have a fair say is the bedrock of a democratic society and sadly one not much practiced in certain other science blogs.
Anyone think it a good idea? Or could suggest topics? Have I gone mad?
Tonyb

And I don’t need to provide citations on this question [although I’ve provided plenty on this subject before].

Actually, you have provided exactly zero citations that address the relevant question, which is the state of the science IN THE PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE. And, exactly zero citations to any peer-reviewed papers that Peterson et al. missed in their methodology.
All that you have provided is some links to screeds written about the discussion in the popular press, and ones that cherry-picked what articles they reported to boot. (And, we know they cherry-picked them since I have produced specific citations to articles that they left out, besides which they never even discussed what methodology they used to find the articles.)

TonyB:
Thanks for your post. I have little to add to what I said before however. You seem to think that somehow most of the papers that supported global cooling were not properly archived whereas those that supported global warming were…or something of the sort. I don’t find this claim very compelling. All the major scientific journals that I know have now have all of their past issues available on digital archives. I certainly know that Science does. (And besides, I don’t see why there would be this sort of selectivity bias in what was preserved.)
You may have remembered folders of articles that you copied…but were these really peer-reviewed scientific articles? And, why can’t we find any of them now? Why have you or Smokey or anyone else for that matter been unable to find even one peer-reviewed paper that Peterson et al. missed that supported global cooling? (I am willing to believe that there might be a few, as Peterson et al. didn’t claim their search method would infallibly find all peer-reviewed articles bearing on the subject…but detractors haven’t even been able to find any!)

Smokey (13:43:28) : The only “evidence” comes from computer models. That’s not good enough to justify spending $trillions of tax dollars on Cap & Trade.
—————
I just got back from a (the) major respiratory disease conference. In many lectures were described cell-based or animal models for the various diseases (asthma, emphysema, etc.). Invariably, much discussion surrounded the applicability, or drawbacks of these models for drug development and for even understanding the disease in humans in general.
Although I can’t say whether or not the multiple complex genetic and biochemicals interplays resulting in these diseases, and their treatment, are as complex as the chaotic systems in climatology, they do have many similarities. Both fields are filled with extremely complex networks.
If anyone suggested using computer models as a basis for getting a treatment for the condition approved – everyone in the room would laugh.
To move it up a level (from the AGW “scientist” level) and suggest using a drug’s beneficial effects in a cell-based assay (i.e. real experimentation) as a basis for approval – everyone in the room would laugh.
….. and then to move a potential therapeutic up one level further into sophisticated animal model studies, and then suggest using the results to seek approval, you’ve guessed it – everyone in the room would laugh.
It’s all about stopping both charlatans and bad scientists from profiting at the expense of unitended consequences (toxicity) in patients. Scientists and physicians in this type of medical science police their own field, even before it gets to the regulators.
I guess the field of human medicine is more mature and contains many first-rate scientists. I hope that some of the better scientists in AGW can develop a spine before Copenhagen.

Since CO2 is a beneficial trace gas the analogy fails. The finance officer would more properly have been surreptitiously ADDING three million bucks to the stores coffers.
By the way, the store in the example is not a business but only a hobby.

“”” Joel Shore (14:09:22) :
BobW in NC:
Here is a diagram showing exchanges of carbon between various components: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg It is indeed true that there are large exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere and between the biosphere and the atmosphere. However, the key is that these exchanges have been nearly in balance since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 or so years ago…and even during the ice age – interglacial cycles, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere did not tend to change as rapidly as they have been doing recently. “””
Joel, I’m quite prepared to take all of that as gospel truth; although I think it can be the subject of a good debate.
But I didn’t see the word “temperature” in there anywhere; and there simply isn’t any observational data that points to ANY of that CO2 interchange being the cause of any temperature changes of note; nor of any process for having it all go out of whack.
There’s still plenty of uncertainty for how much CO2 is rattling aorund in the environment; where it comes from and where it goes to. I keep reading/hearing that some 25% of the total is unaccounted for in some why or another.
While that uncertainty is interesting and worth understanding better; when all is said and done I still don’t think it has any significant bearing on earth’s climate; other than the amount in circulation being affected by some climate changes.

Joel Shore (05:47:53) :
I’ve always marveled at how today’s “climate community” (not to mention some current era journalists themselves) have no trouble implying Newsweek and Time journalists in the 70s were either lying through their teeth or were simply a bunch of hapless hacks when they spoke of the “harbinger of another ice age” and “[evidence] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
As I’ve pointed out on other blogs, everyone should give a careful read to these articles, since they remind me so much of those old Mad Magazine features, where you just fill in the blanks and create a piece of writing that can mean anything, but still has a smooth flowing style.
Substitute warming for cooling, and voila, we still have drought in Africa and lots of tornadoes in the midwest! Not to mention of course the impending disaster because the world can’t possibly grow enough crops to feed all those hungry mouths. Of course, the “climate community” would love to make these articles disappear as faciley as it thinks it’s made the medieval warming period disappear.
And while your asking other people to dig up old references, perhaps you could point me to all those letters to the editors by outraged scientists of the times pointing out how misleading those two articles were.
I only wish the “climate community” would let today’s journalist know what they think of their predecessors when it breathlessly goes running to them with its latest and greatest scientific findings.

Since CO2 is a beneficial trace gas the analogy fails. The finance officer would more properly have been surreptitiously ADDING three million bucks to the stores coffers.

The analogy also fails because increased CO2 causes increased biological activity, which makes use of the extra airborne fertilizer. It’s as if the grocery store could grow extra money.Joel,
Thanks for commenting.
However, the peer-review system in the climate sciences is broken, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere many times. It is completely controlled by a relatively small, self-serving clique of rent-seeking, grant begging opportunists who are pushing a 100% AGW agenda. These are not just my views; internationally esteemed climatologists and statisticians have publicly stated the same thing. Should we believe you, or them?
How many times does the Wegman Report have to be posted? Or M&M’s valid critiques? Or Bishop Hill’s narrative of the corrupt, dishonest shenanigans that go on behind the scenes by the climate peer review clique? Or Prof. Lindzen’s pointed critiques? And many others who say the same things? Are they all wrong? Are they all making it up out of whole cloth? Have they all put their reputations on the line by falsely speaking out? No. They are informing the public of how corrupt the climate peer-review process has become. Should we believe them …or the alarmist version of reality?
The climate peer-review process has been corrupted by big money and status-seeking. James Hansen has taken upwards of a million dollars [that we know of] from groups and individuals with an AGW agenda, while he’s on the public payroll — then he preposterously denies taking the payola. But… he doesn’t sue to recover his stained reputation. That tells you all you need to know about whether Hansen is lying. Mr. Hansen is beholden far more to the people handing him big bucks to push their agenda than he is to the taxpaying public, who only want honest science. Why is that OK?
Hansen’s equally disreputable underling, Gavin Schmidt, runs a website during the day while he is being paid by taxpayers, and he routinely employs censorship. How honest is that? The climate peer-review system has been gamed. It can no longer to be trusted, because the people running it lack ethics. They have traded in their honesty for money.
[Also, if you think I’ve never provided peer-reviewed citations, you are of course mistaken. Use the search feature, it will deconstruct your beliefs about that.]
Concerning cherry-picking, you’re one of the true world leaders in that regard. When have you ever posted anything but what fits your AGW agenda? You need to read Feynman on what makes a good scientist: click.
Despite all your considerable efforts, I doubt that you’ve converted even one person to your AGW beliefs. Yet we regularly read from others here who used to accept AGW, but are now skeptical of it. They are not stupid people. They have simply become skeptical due to the lack of any solid evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis. That’s how science is supposed to work.
Skeptics don’t have an agenda to sell anything. See, Joel, there’s a difference between people selling AGW for grant money, and skeptics. The purveyors of the CO2=AGW hypothesis [and that’s what it’s all about: ‘CO2 is gonna getcha’] have the burden of showing some — any — solid, real world evidence that their hypothesis explains reality better than the long accepted theory of natural climate variability. And unlike those pushing AGW, skeptics don’t get paid for being skeptical.
The CO2=AGW hypothesis is a scientific failure because no falsifiable evidence exists — it’s all computer models and opinion, backed by the increasingly absurd claims that every natural fluctuation is always the fault of anthropogenic CO2… without any underlying proof of that assertion. That’s not nearly good enough.
Skeptics simply say: Show us. Convince us. Provide some solid, reproducible evidence that CO2 is harmful in any way. Back up your AGW beliefs with empirical, falsifiable evidence, if you can find any.
Over the past couple of years the AGW crowd has blamed everything on AGW: the sea level, the ice extent, coral bleaching, the ozone hole, hurricanes, global death rates, receding glaciers, etc., etc. And in every case, skeptics have been proven right, and the AGW purveyors wrong.
The central pillar of AGW is CO2. The hypothesis is that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming. But if CO2 doesn’t cause runaway global warming, then the entire AGW edifice comes crashing down. Your job is to provide solid, real world evidence for your CO2=AGW hypothesis. We’re still waiting for it.

“”” Joel Shore (11:57:28) :
George E. Smith,
I really don’t know how to respond to your post except to say that you really ought to try to understand the arguments that myself and the climate science community in general is making instead of attacking all sorts of strawmen.
It is completely irrelevant to this discussion whether or not water vapor ever gets down to as low concentrations as CO2 is at. (In fact, the higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is ONE of the reasons why the direct human influence on it through our emissions is negligible.) “””
Well maybe irrelevent to you Joel; but not irrelevent. You and others bring up the “longevity” of CO2 in the atmospehre to support the notion that because humans emit some that may stay around for a while that is bad.
The reason I raised the issue of water vapor range of variation was precisely to point out that under the vast majority of global conditions there is always plenty of water vapor in the atmosphere; and yes it is enough to make any human emissions of water vapor quite irrelevent; but then you entirely miss the point that for the very same reason; the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and specially any human additions to that ise very bit as irrelevent because of the overwhelming effect of the much larger amount of water vapor.
Any atmospheric warming “forcing” I guess you climatologists call it depends “logarithmically (we are told) on the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere; that is not the total CO2 in the atmosphere, but the total including water vapor, because water vapor is just as able to absorb IR as is CO2.
It is the total of all GHG species that is responsible for the atmospheric warming; there’s no magic about CO2 that makes it logarithmic responding, but not for water vapor.
CO2 doesn’t demonstrate any significant global temperature change; even if you ascribe 100% of the atmospheric increase to human causes for the very reason that water vapor raises the total GHG to where the logariythm of the change due to a CO2 increase is negligible.
And then to top it off; water vapor forms clouds which stop the whole surface warming in its tracks.
As it happens; I do followe your arguments and everybody elses that can write readable English; and the case for CO2 induced runaway changes in the earth’s climate just isn’t there.
Any thesis that is supported ONLY by computer program models; and fails to predict even the input data that was used to construct the model; let alone project ahead to predict what is yet to be; is hardly what i would call science. It’s all maybes, and could bes, and within the parameters of, and other such gobbledegook.
The earth currently enjoys about the lowest atmospheric CO2 levels it has had in its geologic history; and throughout all that with CO2 as high as 20 times present levels; life has flourished; and here we have the most adaptive species of all is paranoid about perfectly ordinary natural changes; that haven’t produced any catastrophic climate results yet; and don’t show any promise of doing so.
Climatologists; call them climate scientists if you wish, can engage in all kinds of esoteric statistical mathematics, and computer modelling (sans clouds of course);p and some of that is even interesting; but it certainly doesn’t justify bringing the whole of civilisation to a crashing halt because of some completely unsusbsatiated “sky is falling” computer predictions.
And here I define “predictions” as purported results of running any computer model into a time period past the last observational data point entered into it. Call it projections or any other weasel words; it is still something that the model alleges will happen; tomorrow or the next day, or 100 years hence; it’s a prediction, and so far they simply have been wrong.

philincalifornia,
“It’s all about stopping both charlatans and bad scientists from profiting at the expense of unitended consequences (toxicity) in patients. Scientists and physicians in this type of medical science police their own field, even before it gets to the regulators. ”
I guess that since climate is so much simpler than medicine, climatologists can project outcomes a hundred years hence with no problem. Maybe climatologists should be governed by a state board that collects license fees and makes them take continuing education. Then the climatologists could stay up to date just like cosmetologists do!
Maybe it’s just that climatologists don’t have to worry about truth so much because they are only trying to turn the world on it’s head.

Smokey said
“Concerning cherry-picking, you’re one of the true world leaders in that regard. When have you ever posted anything but what fits your AGW agenda? You need to read Feynman on what makes a good scientist:”
Smokey, please read and comment on my 14 15 19 when I suggest that Joel, Mary or RW be invited to put a guest article here if Anthony was willing.
It would be interesting to read their viewpoint as a complete narrative that we could critique, rather than just read a series of comments from them.
Tonyb

Joel
I said
“Are you seriously saying a group of objective authors, seeking to present a well balanced argument, found only around 15/20% of the cooling papers, when statistically it should have been at least double or triple that number? In doing that is it really correct to say that they are presenting ‘a persuasive and well-supported arguement?”
I was asking you to comment on the statistics taken at the time from a poll of scientists that suggests there are a lot more global cooling stories out there than have been found, and that those doing the finding were not that motivated to look that hard.
Tonyb

Can we PLEASE be done with peer review? I have been there done that. I know the score. Number of citations matter, funding matters, and “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” IS the tapestry of getting papers into journals. If, as part of a research center, you have tried to, as a card carrying researcher, get your paper published in any refereed journal, you have insight. The rest of the comments placing peer review on a pedestal are armchair quarterbacking and terribly naive. The true researchers tend to be singular voices crying in the wilderness and are paid little heed till the autumn of life is upon them.

Right at this very moment in Australia (Canberra) is a Senate committee hearing on Carbon Capture(the Senate here is modelled on the US Senate).I really makes my blood boil,as the Public Service is getting down to procedure with the assumption that the science is settled. The committee is stacked with pro-warmers and of course the PS has to toe the line. Our independent Senator Barnaby Joyce just got hot under the collar trying to get an extension of time to press his alternate viewpoint and, guess what ! a coffee break was called. I have been on many committees like this and I am familiar with this tactic.
It is early in the day,stay tuned.

Our articulate climate adviser, economist Professor Garnaut has just confirmed that whether or not Australia has an emission trading scheme,our C02 output will make no difference to the world’s C02 level ‘but politically it will make a big difference’.That is what the game is all about.
Bankruptcy through symbolism.

TonyB (17:12:57),
Yes, I would love to read a proper submission by any advocate of the CO2=AGW=runaway global warming hypothesis [which, if shown to be true, is the only legitimate reason to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer capital to combat].
The problem has always been that the AGW people prefer to criticize from the sidelines. Like Gore, Hansen, Schmidt, Monbiot, Pachauri, Suzuki and the IPCC, they will not stand up and take a stated position, and then debate it and defend it from being torn down and falsified by skeptics — which is precisely the duty of skeptics, according to the scientific method.
Well known proponents of AGW, like those named above, hide out from debates held in front of a public audience in a moderated, televised and neutral public venue such as a major university.
The couple of such debates that have been held were all won by the skeptics’ side. Furthermore, the skeptics went into the debates facing an audience that was initially predisposed to agree with AGW [Recall that Gavin Schmidt blamed his debate loss on the fact that Christopher Monckton is taller than him — even though the debate was held with everyone seated.]
So yes, I would certainly like to see Joel or Mary Hinge or RW or Flanagan or any other proponent of the “CO2 will cause runaway global warming” hypothesis write an article, then defend it from falsification. But I’m not holding my CO2-saturated breath.

And while your asking other people to dig up old references, perhaps you could point me to all those letters to the editors by outraged scientists of the times pointing out how misleading those two articles were.

…it insists on maintaining the shock effect of the dramatic (the subtitle reads “The Coming New Ice Age”) rather than the reality of the discipline; we just don’t know enough to choose definitely at this stage whether we are in for warming or cooling — or when.

John M. says:

I only wish the “climate community” would let today’s journalist know what they think of their predecessors when it breathlessly goes running to them with its latest and greatest scientific findings.

Actually, there is some discussion of that in the Peterson et al. paper and there has been plenty of discussion by scientists of problems even with the modern journalism and also of some scientist’s own roles in this…In fact, some of this discussion has been over at RealClimate. (In particular, they were critical of the overemphasis in the press releases and subsequent press coverage of the climateprediction.net study on the most extreme high end climate sensitivities that they got in some of their runs.)

Can we PLEASE be done with peer review? I have been there done that. I know the score. Number of citations matter, funding matters, and “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” IS the tapestry of getting papers into journals. If, as part of a research center, you have tried to, as a card carrying researcher, get your paper published in any refereed journal, you have insight. The rest of the comments placing peer review on a pedestal are armchair quarterbacking and terribly naive. The true researchers tend to be singular voices crying in the wilderness and are paid little heed till the autumn of life is upon them.

I have published ~30 peer-reviewed papers and have refereed over 80 papers, so I am not “armchair quarterbacking”. And, I don’t claim that peer-review is perfect (hell…I couldn’t possibly believe that after Gerlich and Tscheuschner got their screed published in a somewhat obscure but not entirely unrespectable physics journal). I merely think that it is a good filter for reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. (And, yes, there were a few cases where I got something rejected from a peer reviewed journal…and at least one where I think the rejection was unfair…but again the fact that the process is not 100% perfect in keeping junk out or letting good stuff in does not mean that it is useless.)
And, frankly, for every one person who is an unrecognized genius ahead of his time, there are about 1000 who are just plain crackpots. It amuses me when some of the people seem to believe that they might be the next Galileo or Wegener or Einstein or whoever (and, frankly, some of these comparisons apparently also involve somewhat of a misreading of history).

I was asking you to comment on the statistics taken at the time from a poll of scientists that suggests there are a lot more global cooling stories out there than have been found, and that those doing the finding were not that motivated to look that hard.

Well, even if you are correct, that hardly proves your point of a consensus on cooling. You seem to want to argue that because one poll found a pretty even split while Peterson et al’s numbers of peer-reviewed papers were more lopsided in the global warming direction then perhaps the truth is that things were really lopsided in the global cooling direction?!?!
There are lots of reasons why the poll results could be somewhat different. For example, the poll might have been taken of a broader community of scientists in climate or related fields than those actually publishing in the peer-reviewed journals on the subject. The poll only captured a particular point in time while the survey of the peer-reviewed journals effectively integrated over a longer period. Furthermore, I think the 15-20% number you quote is only those that they categorized as “global cooling”; there were also a bunch that were categorized as neutral.

Any atmospheric warming “forcing” I guess you climatologists call it depends “logarithmically (we are told) on the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere; that is not the total CO2 in the atmosphere, but the total including water vapor, because water vapor is just as able to absorb IR as is CO2.
It is the total of all GHG species that is responsible for the atmospheric warming; there’s no magic about CO2 that makes it logarithmic responding, but not for water vapor.

No…It is not that simple. The CO2 and the water vapor absorb different wavelengths. Yes, there are some overlaps but there are also places where CO2 absorbs significantly where water vapor does not. The radiative transfer calculations have been done and I have seen no serious challenges to them. Both Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen agree that the CO2 radiative forcing is somewhere around 4 W/m^2. The remaining point of contention is just in regards to feedbacks.

The earth currently enjoys about the lowest atmospheric CO2 levels it has had in its geologic history; and throughout all that with CO2 as high as 20 times present levels; life has flourished; and here we have the most adaptive species of all is paranoid about perfectly ordinary natural changes; that haven’t produced any catastrophic climate results yet; and don’t show any promise of doing so.

Well, over the history of the earth, there have been supervolcanoes, asteroid strikes, major extinctions and other catastrophes. Compared to that, a few terrorists flying a few planes into buildings is hardly something to get yourself concerned about, is it? Come on George, you can be more logical than this! The point is that we are changing the climate (and the ocean chemistry) at rates that are quite rapid…and these will likely have serious affects both on human civilization and on ecosystems that are already stressed by other things such as pollution, over-fishing, and habitat fragmentation. There are a wide range of levels of CO2 (and sea levels) that are compatible with life of some sort on this planet but the level that we and the other species are currently adapted to is the one that has been maintained pretty constantly for about ten thousand years…and we have already taken CO2 to levels not seen in 750,000 years and likely not seen in many millions of years.

Climatologists; call them climate scientists if you wish, can engage in all kinds of esoteric statistical mathematics, and computer modelling (sans clouds of course);p and some of that is even interesting; but it certainly doesn’t justify bringing the whole of civilisation to a crashing halt because of some completely unsusbsatiated “sky is falling” computer predictions.

Do you really believe that climate scientists don’t include clouds in the models? If you do, you know way less about the models than I think you do.
And, by the way, the projections for future temperature rises are not just based on the computer models that represent our best understanding of the climate system. They are based on the basic physics of the greenhouse effect and some of the most basic feedbacks involving water vapor and ice- albedo. And, they are based on looking at how the climate system has responded to past perturbations, ranging from the ice age – interglacial cycles to the eruption of Mt Pinatubo.
As for talk about the sky falling, I noticed how all of a sudden cutting back on CO2 emissions means “bringing the whole of civilisation to a crashing halt.” What is that prediction based on? I have to concede that it isn’t based on modeling because, despite the problems with economics modeling (which are more severe than climate modeling), I don’t think there is any modeling that shows that. It is based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, which I suppose makes it superior in your view?

Please note that the actual “per-person/per year” cost of the democrat/socailist/liberal/AGW pro-tax legislation would be $3800.00 dollars/year/person.
Not 800.00.
Not 2100.00
The $2100.00 “cost” was based on an “assumed” pro-AGW cap-and-tax “benefit” (carefully/cleverly not named or identified) of some unknown type of 1700.00 per year, from a baseline of 3600.00. More conservative estimates have been as much as 4800.00 or more.
Note that Pelosi’s (democrat socialist/liberal leader of the US House) oil and energy policies of 2007 and 2008 led directly to the 4.00 and 5.00 dollar per gallon cost of energy that created today’s recession, and of course, the resulting November 2008 election of another socialist/liberal/democrat.
And THOSE oil and energy policies were directed INTENDED TO RAISE PRICESas the liberals focused on global warming to justify their anti-energy policies. Thus, the assumed 3800.00 cost per person are ignoring the overall economic depression as a household loses 10,000.00 to 15,000 of spending money each year.
For nothing.

There is certainly a lot of cherry-picking going on.
Look at this statement for instance.
///No data set shows a significant measurable rise in global temperature over the twelve year period since 1997.///
Now can anyone explain to me why a twelve year period was chosen other than because it gave an answer that tried to prove a biased viewpoint?
Why not ten years? Why not twenty years? Why twelve? Well the only answer is because of the exceptionally hot year of 1998, which is always chosen by disingenuous people to make it look like warming ended after 1998. But nearly every year (if not every one) after 1997 has been warmer than the average for the previous 100 years. Why was this not mentioned? Why hide the truth if your case is valid?
And note I said 100 hundred years – not 97 or 99 or 101.

Mike Bryant (17:02:10) :
I guess that since climate is so much simpler than medicine, climatologists can project outcomes a hundred years hence with no problem. Maybe climatologists should be governed by a state board that collects license fees and makes them take continuing education. Then the climatologists could stay up to date just like cosmetologists do
————
Yep. Since I’ve become interested in this AGW caper of late, and have been interested in the human genetics and biochemistry of asthma and COPD/emphysema for well over a decade, I was actually struck (from my own personal observations) that the complexities might be within the same order of magnitude, at least.
So, to try to predict where the treatment of respiratory disease will be in 100 years, would be pretty silly. 10 years would be a stretch.
Most top scientists I know in my field are one or two years ahead of the published data, In AGW “research”, I get the impression that the so-called scientists have gotten so comfortable with the media bailing them out that they’re not even up on current data. They know the current data is there but, like cockroaches scurrying under the fridge, they don’t want to know.
I have yet to see a paper showing the relationship between current sea ice levels in Antarctica and carbon dioxide levels. How difficult is that for a world leader in the field ?? Or is “Ooooh, all the heat disappeared through the man-made ozone hole” it ?? Is that the world-leading lame theory ??
Or the other one “We can prove that it’s actually warming due to carbon dioxide, despite the fact that it’s cooling”. Steig et al, Nature, 2009. See that pretty red color on the front cover. It must be true.
This is garbage, and real scientists know it.

philincalifornia (14:45:56) :
Your comparison of medical science and climate science is apt. Both deal with complex systems which are generally poorly understood and overall deal with very large amounts of money. But there is an important difference. The press and the public know perfectly well that a scientifc spokesman for a multinational capitalist pharmaceutical company is probably lying for money. It hasn’t dawned on the public that a climate scientist is in much the same position, except that more money is at stake and their scientific case is much weaker. The press in the main already know that but have their own agenda,

Out of curiosity, where is this magic money that climate scientists are cashing in on? Yes, people like Gore and Hansen are probably doing rather well for themselves, but don’t you think that people like the twin nemeses Mann and Steig could make a heckuva lot more money if they put the same training and zeal into a typical industry job?

Joel
Well thanks for agreeing me with on your last post. You said
“Well, you are correct…”
….Of course you didnt say that, I cherry picked the words. You actually said:
“Well, even if you are correct”
We all sometimes cherry pick to make up our case in major or minor ways. In the case of supposed AGW (and other serious matters) the stakes are way too high to allow that. What I am saying is that one would reasonably expect that judging by the statistics there would be more cooling papers found than have been.
That they weren’t may be because of poor archiving, lack of industry in writing papers by cooling scientists or lots of other perfectly valid reasons including the reasons you give-perhaps the evidence wasn’t there in the first place. However a major reason for the statistically dubious bias in numbers could be that the non objective people looking for evidence were looking much harder in one direction than another.
The only way it can be proven either way is for people with a somewhat more objective view of events to take a properly resourced look, or ideally use people from either side which would automatically filter and peer review the results.
Tonyb

But nearly every year (if not every one) after 1997 has been warmer than the average for the previous 100 years. Why was this not mentioned? Why hide the truth if your case is valid?
But you could have said a similar thing in 1945 about 1936, say. That is the nature of warming and cooling periods, i.e. you tend to get clusters of warmer/cooler years.

Anthony
You might have seen that I am suggesting that one of our more informed and serious minded warmists such as Joel, Mary Hinge or RW be invited to do a guest article here. My own choice would be on how doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C without the use of magic
Smokey commented
TonyB (17:12:57),
Yes, I would love to read a proper submission by any advocate of the CO2=AGW=runaway global warming hypothesis [which, if shown to be true, is the only legitimate reason to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer capital to combat]. ”
We only see fragmented posts from any of them interspersed with other comments from other posters- frequently on unrelated subjects. Consequently it would be interesting to see a properly constructed thoughtful article with a proper narrative and references that would enable the rest of us to understand their version of science and enable us to do a critique of them, instead of the other way round.
I think this is the only blog on the internet where such an event could happen and where both sides would treat each other with reasonable respect.
Tonyb

Tony B: “It is certainly untrue to rewrite history and claim global cooling was a myth.”
Hi Tony. Just happened to be passing by. In reply to your contention above I’ll do some recycling myself: “I didn’t say that “global cooling was a myth”. The report I referred to is headed: “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus”.
The important word is “consensus”. I am not arguing that the 1970s claim of global cooling is a myth; rather that the claim of a global cooling consensus among scientists back then is a myth.
The Connolly paper argues that at the time scientific views on cooling/warming were still fluid, and further that cooling papers were in the minority. Maybe they’re wrong, but the evidence they cite of the numbers of cooling versus warming papers supports their argument.

Brendan H
I’m not sure you saw all the previous recycling of this thread in which I posted our comments from several months ago-see, I do hang on your every word 🙂
The summary is as I gave it to Joel. It sums up that on the figures you gave it would reasonably be expected that there are more cooling papers out there to be found but those doing the searching had no reason to look that hard. But we all placed lots of caveats on it-they may or may not be out there.
I am quite happy to do a joint research study with you if you can find some serious funding that will keep us going for a few years 🙂
All the best
Tonyb

Please note that the actual “per-person/per year” cost of the democrat/socailist/liberal/AGW pro-tax legislation would be $3800.00 dollars/year/person.

It is hard to note when you have left out any cite to peer-reviewed literature that states that, let alone evidence that this number is representative of what such studies find. Apparently, many people who call themselves “skeptics” are willing to believe any economic “sky-is-falling” claims on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

The couple of such debates that have been held were all won by the skeptics’ side. Furthermore, the skeptics went into the debates facing an audience that was initially predisposed to agree with AGW [Recall that Gavin Schmidt blamed his debate loss on the fact that Christopher Monckton is taller than him — even though the debate was held with everyone seated.]

There is a reason why in science the debate occurs in the peer-reviewed literature and not before the general public. In fact, “evolution skeptics” also do quite well in public debates. In a battle between the definitiveness and simplicity of good public relations and the complexity and uncertainty of good science, public relations will tend to win over science.

Joel Shore:
“…we have already taken CO2 to levels not seen in 750,000 years and likely not seen in many millions of years.”
Yet the planet continues to cool: click
Rising CO2 levels can be disregarded as a significant source of warming. The planet is telling us quite clearly that, with regard to temperature, CO2 doesn’t matter; it’s an effect, not a cause.
TonyB is right: Joel should write an article for posting here. Let’s see if the CO2=AGW/runaway global warming hypothesis can withstand scrutiny. I fully support such an article, and although I can not speak for Anthony, I suspect that he would be willing to post a well written article.
Skeptics post articles here almost every day. Why are the warmists so afraid to take a stand? Always taking pot shots from the sidelines gets tiresome, even when the pot shots are consistently refuted.
If they think they’ve got a solid case, they should defend their runaway global warming position. Maybe that’s why they don’t take a stand.

Smokey (06:26:14) :
TonyB is right: Joel should write an article for posting here. Let’s see if the CO2=AGW/runaway global warming hypothesis can withstand scrutiny. I fully support such an article, and although I can not speak for Anthony, I suspect that he would be willing to post a well written article.

As far as I know, Anthony has had an open invitation here for a long time for anyone who wants to post their perspective. I imagine it would need to be well thought out and written, but I don’t think that would be a problem for Joel.

TonyB, Smokey, and Jeff: Thanks. I will give your suggestion some thought.
There are a few things that make me hesitant though. One is that I don’t see that I have much to add to the expositions that are already out there, particularly at the level that can be effectively summarized in one or a few posts. There is a reason why the IPCC reports run thousands of pages (with summaries that are shorter but still not that short). That is why I find it most useful to comment on things people say here that I believe are misunderstanding the consensus AGW scientific viewpoint. It is much easier to comment on specific things that I believe are mistakes or misunderstandings than write something that tries to anticipate all of them in advance.
A second point is that it is a considerable time commitment, not only the initial post but also the follow-up discussion. (Since the audience here is overwhelmingly “skeptics”, posts by “skeptics” do get met with some questions and challenges but a lot of the comments are simply congratulatory or agreeing with the original post. That is not likely to be the case with a post by someone like myself. Heck, even a single comment that I make here often provokes such a deluge of responses which I then feel compelled to respond to that I seem to wear out my welcome with people like Smokey and Anthony.)

“”” Joel Shore (12:07:13) :
TonyB, Smokey, and Jeff: Thanks. I will give your suggestion some thought.
There are a few things that make me hesitant though. One is that I don’t see that I have much to add to the expositions that are already out there, particularly at the level that can be effectively summarized in one or a few posts. There is a reason why the IPCC reports run thousands of pages (with summaries that are shorter but still not that short). That is why I find it most useful to comment on things people say here that I believe are misunderstanding the consensus AGW scientific viewpoint. “””
Well there’s an Oxymoron if I ever saw one:- “the concensus AGW scientific viewpoint ”
I thought the scientific viewpoint was about proof; not concensus. Popularity contests are run by concensus, not scientific debates.
And you are obviously not aware of the very large body of scientific declaration of various levels of skepticism of the IPCC AGW viewpoint, including from many formerly part of the IPCCpanels.
There clearly is no concensus that “the science is settled”; which goes along with the absence of any scientific observations linking CO2 to subsequent global temperature rise.
The IPCC AGW viewpoint is at the present time sustained only by computer models, and models that don’t even model what the earth itself is modelling including cloud variations.

Tony B: “It sums up that on the figures you gave it would reasonably be expected that there are more cooling papers out there to be found but those doing the searching had no reason to look that hard.”
I will also recycle my previous response about the relationship between a 1970s survey of scientific opinion and the ratio of cooling to warming papers found by Connolly:
“Twenty of the papers were considered to be neutral, so I doubt that the ratio of warming vs cooling could be presented as 80/20. Also, while scientific papers in the 1970s may have favoured warming – although probably more tentatively than now – there’s no reason to assume that the great majority of climate scientists were in favour of AGW, since the evidence was less conclusive back then.”
So while you may be correct that Connolly and co had no reason to seek cooling papers, they have presented their evidence, and that’s what we have to go on.
“I am quite happy to do a joint research study with you if you can find some serious funding that will keep us going for a few years :)”
There’s an idea. I’m looking for a career change.

Joel:
“That is why I find it most useful to comment on things people say here that I believe are misunderstanding the consensus AGW scientific viewpoint.”
OK, so help us understand the consensus by telling us what you consider the two or three compelling pieces of evidence that it’s based on.
For example, something like Mann’s hockey stick and the original low resolution Vostok ice core data. Together, they were sufficient to convince me that a major problem was unfolding. Of course, neither of these data sets survived scientific scrutiny. So what, in your view, is still standing. Just a few lines will do.

davidc: My viewpoint is basically this – Carbon dioxide has increased from the pre-industrial value of ~280ppm to ~385ppm due to burning of fossil fuels. (The case for this is airtight, despite a few people still trying to dispute it.) The radiative effect of a given increase in CO2 can be calculated to reasonably good accuracy and is about 4 W/m^2 for a doubling of CO2. (Even Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen agree with this.) We know from basic radiative physics that, in the absence of any feedbacks, this would lead to ~1.1 C increase in temperature (+-0.1 C).
So, the real question comes down to what the feedbacks do to this. There are two approaches to that question, one empirical and one theoretical (i.e., through modeling). The empirical data, taken together, all seem to point to an equilibrium climate sensitivity in the neighborhood of about 0.5 to 1.0 C per (W/m^2) of radiative forcing, or 2 – 4 C for doubling CO2. This includes estimates based on the last glacial maximum, the Mt Pinatubo eruption, the instrumental temperature record (although that provides the least strong constraint due to uncertainties in the aerosol forcing), and other data. And, in general, those who study paleoclimate have concluded that the climate system seems quite sensitive to small perturbations (e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821 ).
The climate modeling also suggests that positive feedbacks dominate. The water vapor feedback is now quite well-confirmed by the satellite data, not only for the overall trends but even for the year-to-year fluctuations (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 … look especially at Fig. 2). The ice-albedo feedback is also on reasonably solid footing. It seems to me that the only thing that could “save us” is a strongly negative cloud feedback. However, this seems unlikely for a few reasons: One is that none of the models with all their different parameterizations of clouds has shown such a feedback. Furthermore, nobody has successfully shown that a model with such a negative feedback could successfully replicate the current climate very well. And, finally, if such a strong negative feedback is found, it would be necessary to rewrite our entire understanding of the paleoclimate. E.g., we will no longer understand why the ice ages occurred. (And, no, this is not just a matter of there being no role for CO2. Even if you believe that the relationship between CO2 and temperature is all one way [temperature changes causing CO2 changes] in the ice core record, the point is that we think we have pretty good estimates of the various forcings on the climate then relative to now and they are too weak to explain the difference in temperature if the net feedbacks are negative.)
Of course, Roy Spencer claims to have found a negative feedback involving clouds. However, his claim for this is based on a lot of unusual data analysis and, while I can’t say I know exactly what is wrong with his approach (although I think that Tamino may be on to the gist of it here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/spencers-folly-3/, as I don’t find Spencer’s dismissal of Tamino’s critique to be very convincing), I do know that Spencer has fooled himself before doing data analysis…and in some pretty elementary ways. (See here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/a-bag-of-hammers/ but note that I’m not relying on Tamino here since he just points out something that anyone with a basic knowledge of calculus can easily verify.) So, given that, and the fact that his conclusion disagrees with such a large body of other evidence, I am extremely skeptical.

Oh…And, I might add that my last post didn’t even touch on the attribution studies for the temperature rise that we have been seeing over the past ~4 decades and the fact that the fingerprint (e.g., increasing temperatures in the troposphere and decreases in the stratosphere) agrees with the mechanism of being due to greenhouse gases and disagrees with, say, a direct solar mechanism.
And, since I am a statistical physicist who understands how a dataset such at temperature behaves when there is a combination of an underlying trend and superimposed climate fluctuations, I find the arguments that “there has been cooling since [cherrypicked date] at least if I use [cherrypicked data set]” to be quite unconvincing. There is no doubt that we have just gone through a cold fluctuation due to La Nina and my guess is a lot of interest in sites such as this one will wane once the next El Nino comes.

Joel Shore,
As always I’m getting an itchy trigger finger thinking about the opportunities to deconstruct your post above, but TonyB has made an excellent point: it’s real easy to take drive-by pot shots from the sidelines. In fact, that’s all that the handful of CO2=AGW believers here ever do. That’s all any warmists do any more anywhere, ever since their data-hiding heroes got publicly spanked in moderated debates by skeptics like Monckton, Crichton and Lindzen.
So here’s a challenge to someone who regularly brags about the peer reviewed papers he’s got under his belt: write the best article you can, attempting to show that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause runaway global warming. Don’t forget to identify the tipping point, that’s important.
And be aware that skeptics here aren’t like the referee and journal friends you schmooze to get published; those folks tend to be sympathetic to your alarmist point of view, and therefore they are much more likely to give you a pass on anything questionable.
Not so here. We’re not mutual back scratchers. We’re skeptics of the CO2=AGW hypothesis, and so far the climate is in general agreement with skeptics. And models won’t get you far unless they can clearly predict. Which eliminates all of them. No, you will have to make a solid, real world case that falsifies the existing theory that the observed global temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability, in which the planet is slowly warming along a trend line going back to the last Ice Age and LIA, with alternating warm and cool periods. The planet is currently well within those trend line parameters — which is why you’ll have to identify that putative tipping point, to show that the CO2=AGW hypothesis explains reality better than the existing theory; it must have better predictive value to overturn the existing order.
Peer-review here will be rigorous — as it should be. [And it’s not so rigorous in the mainstream climate peer-review process, where peer-review is a little too cozy; see the “peer-reviewed” Schön & Hwang Woo-suk frauds.] Skepticism is absolutely essential to the scientific method. It is the duty of skeptics to tear down a new hypothesis, if they possibly can.
But skeptics have had a hard time even being considered, much less published, in the clique-controlled climate peer-review process. So they are deliberately forced to publish in other hard science journals. This challenge is the other side of that coin: we want to give you an opportunity to make your CO2=runaway global warming case. If only the AAAS, of which I was a member for over twenty years, would give skeptics an equal chance to refute your side… but they don’t. Why? Because they don’t want their new, money-making hypothesis to be falsified. They covet the gravy train, which they jealously control. The down side is that the climate peer-review process has been corrupted by the big money involved.
So why not give it a shot, Joel? Pick up the gauntlet that Tony and I are throwing down. Show us that mysterious tipping point. We want to understand how a minor trace gas — one of the most beneficial and harmless compounds on Earth, and essential to all life — by rising from four parts per 10,000 to 5 or 6 parts per 10,000, will cause a climate catastrophe when it’s never happened before. Not even at levels twenty times as high as they are now. Because if CO2 won’t cause a climate catastrophe, then there is no reason to spend any more tax money or government grant money on it. There are much more deserving problems to spend that money on — real problems.
I sincerely hope you take the challenge. The parameters are clearly stated here. As an added benefit, you will see what it’s like to be on the other side of the fence, defending what you wrote from skeptics who will tear it down, piece by piece, until nothing but the truth remains — or nothing remains.
Do it. I double-dog dare you.

Brendan H
For our joint research project-motto ‘seeking the truth’ shall we go for £250,000 each per year, plus the same again to cover one researcher each?
I think we need physical access to the IPCC who are in Geneva so a place there in the winter (an extra of course) would be good. Its absolutely coincidental I am a skier.
5 years should be enough to enable us to get our study finished, then we will see-looking from the perspective of both sides-whether Connelly et al were correct, or -almost unbelievable I know- whether they had an axe to grind. When can you start?
Best wishes
tonyb

Smokey and Joel
I agree 100% with Smokey in his post.
Joel, with respect, I think you make the fundamental mistake in believing we dont ‘understand’. We have a similarity here with the EU who are suprised when their pearls of wisdom are ignored. An example (of many) is with the Lisbon treaty that the Irish voted against-us Brits haven’t been allowed a say because they know the answer we would give.
The EU said the Irish obviously didn’t ‘understand’ the message and have set up another vote in order to get the ‘right’ decision. The trouble is we DO understand which is PRECISELY why we want to reject it.
I view the IPCC Document as a Dan Brown novel (and yes of course most of us have read it-AR1-4 that is, not Dan Brown).
The plot is basically interesting, throws in some undeniable facts, some things that look like facts but aren’t, has an increasingly theadbare plot with numerous holes and becomes increasingly silly and frantic as it get to the denouement.
To justify their version of events requires that several plot lines are considered factual.
* firstly that co2 has been constant for 650,000 years
* secondly that temperatures have been relatively constant in the past -hence the iconic status given to the hockey stick which rejected history
* thirdly that there is such a rational notion as a single global temperature accurate to fractions of a degree, that can be computed back to 1850 or 1880 based on reliable and consistent data sets.
*next, that our contribution to overall co2 has disturbed the equilibrium and nudged the co2 thermostat higher
*that this nudging can be linked to rising co2/temperature in a cause and effect
* That doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C
* That all sorts of feedbacks will cause catastrophic temperature rises (the equivalent of the Dan Brown mad chase through Paris as the clock ticks)
* That sea levels are rising at the rate claimed and will accelerate
* That the science is settled and models are utterly reliable- when even the author admits numerous times they aren’t.
The truth is that we have been this way before climatically. It needs someone to admit this and tell us why its different THIS time round.
We are not idiots-if someone can demonstrate-without smoke and mirrors- that our actions will cause a catastrophe please give us all enough credit here that we would accept we need to change our ways.
Hope you will take up the challenge.
Tonyb

Joel,
Thanks for the reply, more detail than I expected. I’ll take some time to follow up on your links and references before commenting.
I’ve asked these questions before on various blogs and yours is the first reply I’ve had. So, again, thanks.

Joel Shore
Thanks for posting your analysis. There are many issues, but I’ll address just one :
On the matter of feedbacks you say “It seems to me that the only thing that could “save us” is a strongly negative cloud feedback. However, this seems unlikely for a few reasons: One is that none of the models with all their different parameterizations of clouds has shown such a feedback. Furthermore, nobody has successfully shown that a model with such a negative feedback could successfully replicate the current climate very well. And, finally, if such a strong negative feedback is found, it would be necessary to rewrite our entire understanding of the paleoclimate. E.g., we will no longer understand why the ice ages occurred. […]
Of course, Roy Spencer claims to have found a negative feedback involving clouds. However, his claim for this is based on a lot of unusual data analysis and, while I can’t say I know exactly what is wrong with his approach […..]”
Looking in the real world for the feedbacks is now needed, not just looking in the models. ie, they need to be properly verified.
I don’t think the cloud feedback is happening at all – and I too am not convinced that Roy Spencer has got it right saying there’s negative cloud feedback – because it looks like clouds simply act independently. Take a look athttp://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1376.pdf
There is a simple graph of albedo (1st graph on p.22) showing albedo (cloud cover) declining from the 1980’s to 2000 then increasing again. See Pielke Sr’s comments here, linking it to ocean coolinghttp://climatesci.org/2009/01/02/new-jgr-paper-inter-annual-variations-in-earths-reflectance-by-palle-et-al-2009/
My conclusion from this and from much other material including the IPCC Report, is that there is quite simply no justification for the IPCC claiming a positive cloud feedback, in fact the IPCC themselves say repeatedly that they do not understand clouds. It does look like the disappearing clouds delivered a significant part of the late 20thC warming, but the reappearing clouds are helping to cool us again now. [Important note re timing : the cooling won’t start the moment cloud cover starts increasing. Cooling starts only when cloud cover increases above a certain level.]

TonyB: “For our joint research project-motto ’seeking the truth’ shall we go for £250,000 each per year, plus the same again to cover one researcher each?”
Sounds about right. I should point out that my skill set is primarily in supervisory/management, so the addition of researchers to do the leg-work is probably wise.
We are also fortunate in having before us an excellent source in the Connolly paper, so I’m not sure that much more substantive work is required – checking out the existing sources should be sufficient.
In which case, the researchers need not have great expertise in this area. Youth and enthusiasm are the primary requirements:http://www.thereeftank.com/blog/qaampa-with-marine-biologist-sheril-kirshenbaum/

Brendan H
We will need a peer reviewer so I am nominating Smokey who is well known for his complete objectivity as were Connelly and his two fellow researchers .
So all we need now is for someone to cough up the money. Perhps I can get my MP to put it on his expenses?
Best wishes
TonyB

Tony and Brendan,
I am, of course, completely objective. I follow the example of those luminaries at Science, Nature and the Lancet who bend over backwards to be objective.
OK, that was sarcasm.
The difference between skeptics and those selling AGW, though, goes to the heart of the entire matter: As a skeptic, I am simply saying: prove it. Or at least provide real, verifiable evidence that AGW exists. Solid, not flimsy evidence. But rather than provide the tools a skeptic requires, the AGW community puts up roadblocks to the truth. Skeptics feel like Diogenes wandering the streets with a lantern, looking for an honest AGW man.
To be a true skeptic, one must be a rabid skeptic. Otherwise, fraud creeps in. We see AGW fraud everywhere, from the refusal of taxpayer-paid public servants to archive their data and methodologies, to the thoroughly corrupt UN and its IPCC political appointees, to the gaming of the climate peer-review process by a small clique of self-serving grant seekers. Corruption is endemic in the AGW community. They have learned to game the system. Scientific veracity no longer matters.
Therefore, if a skeptic is neutral and doesn’t hold the fraudsters’ feet to the fire, the role of scientific skeptics is fatally diminished. It is like a legal advocate trying to see the other side’s point of view. That never works. Skeptics are not doing their duty according to the scientific method if they do not demand that the purveyors of the CO2=AGW hypothesis must show convincingly and transparently that their new hypothesis explains reality better than the theory of natural climate variability. So far, they have completely failed.
Why? Because they hide their methodology and raw data. They expect everyone to take their conclusions on faith. That naturally leads to corruption, because there is big, big money involved. Scientists are no more immune to rent-seeking than anyone else. AGW has turned into a giant con game. The evidence is everywhere.
So I do what is necessary: I demand answers. You can see the AGW side constantly squirming in response, and trying to wiggle out of having to show exactly how they arrived at their conclusions; it’s a secret, see? We’re expected to trust them.
So we must hold their feet to the fire, or they will succeed in stealing from us. Because the AGW scam is not about science any more. It is about money. Our tax money. And how they can get their hands much deeper into our pockets.
Brendan H and every other interested party on both sides should demand, for a start, that every individual and organization that takes public money must immediately publicly archive all the raw data and every computer algorithm they use. Our taxes paid for that work product, and it is nothing less than dishonesty to withhold the work product from those who paid for it. Corruption is endemic within the AGW community, and I make no apologies for demanding answers.
That said, I propose to raise your stipend to £500,000 per annum. Each, of course. It’s no more money wasted than what goes into the black hole of the corrupt and unaccountable UN.

Doesn’t look like much is going on at NSIDC.
In “Sea Ice in the News” on their website (the link you posted), the latest item is “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows” dated … 1 October 2007.
Maybe it’s only news if there is less ice, so we may have to wait 50-60 years (a PDO cycle) for the next news item?
[It certainly does look like they are having satellite trouble, with a huge chunk of the ice map missing. Nansen http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic have an unfiltered vertical drop in extent and area of c.30%.]

matt v. (05:50:38) :
Hi Matt,
Please re-read my posts on this thread. I don’t think we are in disagreement.
To be clear, I think there is reasonable evidence that Earth was ~0.3C warmer in ~1940 than today, and humanmade CO2 emissions have increased ~800% since that time.
In summary, I think there is adequate evidence to state:
There is no humanmade global warming crisis.
There is no significant sensitivity of Earth temperature to increased atmospheric CO2.
CO2 lags, does not lead temperature at all time scales.
The future does not cause the past.
I predicted cooling in an article published in 2002 or 2003. I hope this proves incorrect. Humankind does much better under warming than cooling conditions.
Our undereducated politicians continue to obsess about global warming, and as a result we are unlikely to be prepared should serious cooling occur.
***************************

Strongly agree Smokey.
It is clear to me, given the great difficulties that Steve McIntyre has experienced when attempting to obtain research materials from several publicly sponsored climate researchers, that these individuals are deliberately concealing data and methodologies that they fear will not stand up to logical scrutiny.
I have similar concerns about peer review in climate science, which is often just corrupt, incestuous, academic cronyism.
When a researcher fails to produce data in a timely and competent manner, that should be enough evidence, given recent experience, to dismiss their work.
McIntyre spent years obtaining and examining Mann’s hockey stick data, only to find out conclusively that it was without merit. This was later substantiated by the Wegman inquiry.
Why waste all this time and effort? NO data, NO credibility – it should be that simple.

Smokey said;
“Brendan H and every other interested party on both sides should demand, for a start, that every individual and organization that takes public money must immediately publicly archive all the raw data and every computer algorithm they use. Our taxes paid for that work product, and it is nothing less than dishonesty to withhold the work product from those who paid for it. Corruption is endemic within the AGW community, and I make no apologies for demanding answers.
That said, I propose to raise your stipend to £500,000 per annum. Each, of course. It’s no more money wasted than what goes into the black hole of the corrupt and unaccountable UN.”
Absolutely agree with the first part. Why should organisations like the Met office hide behind the FOI act?
As for the second part, should we give you our bank details now or later?
Brendan H
After following your link I think your motives are less than pure…
Tonyb

Smokey
I will just go and find my bank details, whilst I am away would you glance at my 00 48 41?
I wrote out a list of helpful points and suggestions for Joel should he take up our challenge. Are there any more ‘plot lines’ you think we could usefully add into the equation?
Tonyb

Tony,
I’ve read all your posts, even if I haven’t responded to each of them. And yes, I think Joel should answer your questions too, and also answer the 4 points listed on page 3 here: click
But I notice Joel has disappeared from this thread. So has RW. If I were them, I’d hide out too.
Maybe Brendan H can step into the breach and take a shot at it.

Smokey: “We see AGW fraud everywhere…”
As I’ve said previously, if you think you have a case, document it and place it before the proper authorities.
“Therefore, if a skeptic is neutral and doesn’t hold the fraudsters’ feet to the fire, the role of scientific skeptics is fatally diminished.”
I would say such an attitude indicates advocacy rather than scepticism. Such a sceptic would have made up their mind that climate fraud was occurring, in which case, the science would become secondary. If so, any debate would be about something other than the science.
“Maybe Brendan H can step into the breach and take a shot at it.”
Sorry, I’m just a layman, so I could not give you an article at the level of detail you would require.

Smokey
RE; Transfer of money to my account for the joint research project.
In the time honoured tradition of averaging meaningless and ever changing figures in order to arrive at a precise and highly accurate data set (like Global mean average temperature) I have taken all my bank accounts details past and present, averaged them, corrected them to 2 decimal places and interpolated quite a lot of information I seem to have mislaid or never existed in the first place but is bound to be highly accurate.
So the Bank acct number you want is
12.34 5.45 8.76 9.23 5.45
The disheartening thing about this exchange is that Brendan H can link to the rather attractive scientist he obviously has impure thoughts about, whilst we are stuck with Monckton. Still you can’t win them all.
Your 4 extra points are noted.
Tonyb

And yes, I think Joel should answer your questions too, and also answer the 4 points listed on page 3 here: click

Here is the link that Smokey clicked to: http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/the_skeptics_handbook_2-22_lq.pdf A brief answer to these 4 points:
(1) By the “hotspot”, she is presumably talking about the idea that the temperature trends (and fluctuations) should be magnified as you go up in the tropical atmosphere. However, she is absolutely incorrect in saying that this is a signature of greenhouse gases and that its (supposed) absence means that something else is causing the warming. In fact, this magnification is predicted as a result of basic physics, what is called “moist adiabatic lapse rate theory” independent of the warming mechanism. And, the magnification is seen if you look at temperature fluctuations that occur, say, on a roughly yearly timescale. Unfortunately, for the long term multidecadal trends, both the satellites and weather balloon data have significant uncertainties and artifacts that make it very difficult to assess whether the expected magnification is or is not there. If it really isn’t there (which I think is unlikely), it would mean that there is something quite basic about the tropical atmosphere that is not being correctly understood and simulated by the models but it would not say anything one way or the other about what has caused the temperature increases that we have seen. As I noted, what is a signature that, if not unique to greenhouse gases at least differentiates it from direct solar forcing, is a rise in the temperatures of the troposphere and a decline in the temperatures of the stratosphere…and this is in fact what is seen.
(2) This is a red herring. Scientists have understood since at least Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton’s seminal paper in the mid 1970s ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;194/4270/1121 ) that the “pacemaker” for the ice ages were the Milankovitch oscillations in the earth’s orbit and also that these changes must then trigger the changes in CO2 levels. However, that does not mean that the causation only goes one way. Since we can very accurate estimate the radiative forcing due to CO2 and can also estimate the radiative forcing due to the changes in albedo (due to ice sheets) and changes in aerosol levels, it allows scientists to estimate that about 1/3 of the temperature change between the last glacial maximum and now is due to CO2 and also allows the estimation of the climate sensitivity of 0.5 to 1.0 C per (W/M^2) that I mentioned above. The greenhouse gases are also believed to play an important role in linking the temperature changes in the two hemispheres. (And, in fact, I believe the current best understanding of the data is that it is the temperature changes in only one of the hemispheres that tends to lead the CO2 changes.)
(3) We’ve discussed this to death. The point is that trends over short periods of time are dominated by the fluctuations in the climate such as El Nina – La Nina and, in fact, when one puts error bars on the trends over such times one finds that they are simply very ill-determined. It is completely analogous to the fact that even for places like Rochester that have a very strong seasonal cycle, one often has weeks in spring with a negative temperature trend (and weeks in fall with a positive temperature trend).
(4) It is true that the dependence of temperatures on CO2 levels is expected to be approximately logarithmic. However, scientists already understand that, which is why they speak of the amount of warming due to a certain FRACTIONAL change in CO2 levels (such as a doubling) rather than a certain ABSOLUTE change in CO2 levels (such as 100ppm). It is a property of a logarithmic function y = log(x) that a given fractional change in x produces the same increment in y no matter what the value of x is. As for the claim that “In fact, carbon levels were ten times as high in the past but the world still slipped into an ice age,” this shows how willing skeptics such as Joanne Nova are to believe any piece of data, no matter how flimsy, if it seems to support their cause. In fact, for the time periods of hundreds of millions of years ago that she is talking about, the levels of CO2 are not known with any good precision or time resolution. I believe that all that can be said with any certainty is that during a period of time when CO2 levels were generally believed to generally be quite high, there seems to have been a cold period interrupting the warmth; what the CO2 levels were during that cold period itself cannot be determined. Furthermore, one is talking about periods so long ago that other factors are quite different, including the locations if continents and mountain ranges, ocean currents, possibly solar luminosity, etc., etc.

But I notice Joel has disappeared from this thread. So has RW. If I were them, I’d hide out too.

Despite claims to the contrary by you and Anthony, I do have a life outside of WUWT. I was away this Memorial Day weekend on a camping / rock climbing trip.

To justify their version of events requires that several plot lines are considered factual.
* firstly that co2 has been constant for 650,000 years

No…The ice core data shows that variations of CO2 have been fairly dramatic over that time, ranging from ~180ppm during the depths of the ice ages to ~280-300ppm during the interglacial periods. What is true is that the levels have not been above ~300ppm during that time and that they are now at ~385ppm.

* secondly that temperatures have been relatively constant in the past -hence the iconic status given to the hockey stick which rejected history

No, the hockey stick did not reject history. What it demonstrated is that, because the warm periods that occurred in during the Medieval Warm Period were not very synchronous at different locations, when one produces a temperature record of the entire northern hemisphere it does not show that pronounced and broad-based a warming as is occurring today. And, while some other reconstructions do show somewhat more temperature variation (mainly by having a more dramatic cooling during the “Little Ice Age”), they all seem to pretty much agree with the conclusion of the current warmth likely being unparalleled in at least the last 1200 years.

* thirdly that there is such a rational notion as a single global temperature accurate to fractions of a degree, that can be computed back to 1850 or 1880 based on reliable and consistent data sets.

Actually, what is computed is not a global temperature but a temperature anomaly…which is a somewhat different beast. And, the basics of this temperature record have been confirmed by a number of different studies, as well as parallel evidence regarding the melting of glaciers, the earlier onset of spring, and many other indicators.

* That doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C

I’m not really sure why you are stuck on this 6.2 C number. I believe that was the upper bound mentioned in one study. The IPCC likely range for the equilibrium climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is 2 C to 4.5 C, with a value below 1.5 C considered very unlikely.

* That the science is settled and models are utterly reliable- when even the author admits numerous times they aren’t.

No…What is being said is that there that, while there are substantial uncertainties, there are some things that we know with a fairly high degree of confidence. And, it also should be pointed out that the uncertainties are not a very good reason to do nothing since some of them revolve around things like tipping points which could turn out to mean that things will be worse than the projections suggest.

The disheartening thing about this exchange is that Brendan H can link to the rather attractive scientist he obviously has impure thoughts about, whilst we are stuck with Monckton. Still you can’t win them all.

That was a good laugh! Hey, I think I’d also rather hang out with Kirshenbaum than with Monckton, but everybody’s got to make their choices!

Welcome back to the conversation, Joel. I look forward to your WUWT article. In the mean time, let me point out that your response above was riddled with the equivalent of “what ifs”. No solid evidence of any kind.
For example:

As for the claim that “In fact, carbon levels were ten times as high in the past but the world still slipped into an ice age,” this shows how willing skeptics such as Joanne Nova are to believe any piece of data, no matter how flimsy, if it seems to support their cause.

That’s projection, Joel. Skeptics need prove nothing; it’s the warmists who have to do the convincing.
By attempting to claim that rising CO2 caused global warming except for that inconvenient time [of millions of years] when there was “a cold period interrupting the warmth,” you accept the existence of those CO2 levels — even while trying to claim that nobody really knows what those levels were. I’m sure plenty of geologists would set you straight on that score.
Anyway, you always fall into the trap of the argumentum ad ignorantiam: the fallacy of assuming that something [CO2=AGW] is true, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. To make matters worse, CO2=AGW has been proven false. Yet you still assume it’s true — despite the fact that the planet itself is contradicting you.
Anyway, I look forward to your article submission to WUWT. These little tracts are too easy to deconstruct, and at this point not many folks are reading this thread. I’m saving my time and energy for something more juicy; something that thousands of people will read and comment on.
Don’t forget to identify that mysterious tipping point!

So here’s a challenge to someone who regularly brags about the peer reviewed papers he’s got under his belt: write the best article you can, attempting to show that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause runaway global warming. Don’t forget to identify the tipping point, that’s important.
And be aware that skeptics here aren’t like the referee and journal friends you schmooze to get published; those folks tend to be sympathetic to your alarmist point of view, and therefore they are much more likely to give you a pass on anything questionable.
Not so here. We’re not mutual back scratchers. We’re skeptics of the CO2=AGW hypothesis

First of all, perhaps you have missed it, but I think I’ve been pretty clear on the fact that I am not a climate scientist; I am a physicist and my peer-reviewed work has nothing direcly to do with climate science and thus what the referees views are on climate science wouldn’t be relevant to their predisposition toward my papers.
I can also tell you that while science may tend to be a bit cliquish sometimes, I think your views on how peer review works are pretty cynical compared to the reality. I personally have never “schmoozed to get published.”
As for you guys, well, I think there is some pretty good give-and-take here but I think your statement that your “skeptics of the CO2=AGW hypothesis” describes something that I have found to be true…which is that many of the folks here (although not all of them) seem to have a sort of one-way skepticism. I.e., there is great skepticism about anything supporting AGW but very little skepticism about supposed evidence pointing in the other direction. Your embrace of the Joanne Nova’s rather silly talking points is one example. Another example is the fact that Roy Spencer posted a data analysis here over a year ago about the origin of the current rise in CO2 and that noone seemed to notice that the data analysis contained a very significant problem that rendered the result he showed essentially meaningless … even though the fortuitously exact agreement between two linear regressions should have been an immediate clue that what was claimed to be a significant physical result was in fact just a mathematical tautology!

I sincerely hope you take the challenge. The parameters are clearly stated here. As an added benefit, you will see what it’s like to be on the other side of the fence, defending what you wrote from skeptics who will tear it down, piece by piece, until nothing but the truth remains — or nothing remains.

I’ve had plenty of experience with that posting comments on this website. And, I have suggested that you might want to try commenting at other, less sympathetic, websites in order to experience this.

That’s projection, Joel. Skeptics need prove nothing; it’s the warmists who have to do the convincing.

You say this so often that I think it is quite disturbing how little responsibility you put on yourself and those who share your view. In fact, I find this a rather lame attempt to avoid any responsibility whatsover. You seem to think that all you need to do with a scientific theory that you don’t like is to throw a lot of mud on it and hope that it sticks. You have seem to acknowledge no level of responsibility to try to make sure your own arguments are good.
And, as a practical matter, I hate to tell you but while the situation may be like you describe in your own head, it is not that way in the real world. In the real world, the scientific community has already found the evidence of AGW quite compelling and has told the policymakers this and, for the most part, the policymakers seem to be accepting the scientific conclusions. So, in fact, it is now your responsibility to come up with compelling scientific arguments as to why this conclusion that has been reached is incorrect.
And, as piece of advice, I would tell you that you make it a lot easier for the scientific community and the policymakers to dismiss you when you cling onto the sort of poor arguments that Joanne Nova presents (or Beck, or Gerlich and Tscheunscher, or Miskolczi). These arguments may find some traction here but they won’t out there.

We want to understand how a minor trace gas — one of the most beneficial and harmless compounds on Earth, and essential to all life — by rising from four parts per 10,000 to 5 or 6 parts per 10,000, will cause a climate catastrophe when it’s never happened before. Not even at levels twenty times as high as they are now.

I have recently read a quote by an atmospheric scientist (and someone who is actually probably closer to the skeptic…or agnostic…camp overall on AGW than anything else) who noted “To those who snort that 340ppm of anything must surely be of no consequence, I recommend 340ppm of arsenic in their coffee.” One of the reasons why a trace gas makes so much difference is that the diatomic molecules that make up 99% of our atmosphere are essentially transparent to infrared radiation. Another is in fact the logarithmic dependence of radiative forcing on concentrations over a large range of concentration, which essentially means that rather small concentrations can have a disproportionately large effect.
As for the “it’s never happened before” claim, I suppose if you define “catastrophe” stringently enough, you could make that claim. Sea levels have in fact been tens of meters higher and places that are now quite temperate have been tropical. And, going in the other direction, places here like Rochester that are now fairly temperate have been buried under a couple miles of glacier. And, probably at least in large part due to such climatic changes, there have been several large-scale extinctions of flora and fauna on the planet. Perhaps these things don’t qualify as catastrophes to you, but they sure as heck seem to be significant to me.
And, of course, if one applies your sort of long-term geological point-of-view to other problems, they don’t seem to be very catastrophic either. So, terrorists fly a few airplanes into a few buildings and kill a few thousand people, is that such a big deal? It is hardly a blip to the global environment and is dwarfed by the number of people who die each year due to other causes (even car accidents, which similarly kill U.S. citizens in the prime of their life) So, would you propose not spending any money to fight terrorism either?

Joel Shore – you point out that “skeptics” tend to have one-way skepticism. I would argue that this is in large part to counteract the one-way gullibility of others, and that on the whole they do a lot better at being open-minded than the proponents of AGW. When you say “In the real world, the scientific community has already found the evidence of AGW quite compelling and has told the policymakers this and, for the most part, the policymakers seem to be accepting the scientific conclusions. So, in fact, it is now your responsibility to come up with compelling scientific arguments as to why this conclusion that has been reached is incorrect.” there is one absolutely glaring error – the AGW hypothesis has never been substantiated by testing, and has been elevated to the status of scientific law by a political process.
When I said that the AGW hypothesis has never been substantiated by testing, I was badly understating the case. It has been tested many times, but has failed all or virtually all of those tests (for a hypothesis to be elevated to the status of a theory, it must pass all tests).
I would like you to address the issue of testing. You could start with
1. my post of 23 May 01:36:04, about clouds,
and continue by explaining
2. why the tropical troposphere has barely warmed at all since around 1985, and has certainly warmed by a lot less than the surface. This is relevant, because the AGW hypothesis places the main location of CO2-caused warming firmly in the tropical troposphere, and shows much more warming there than at the surface. In other words, the “warming” part of AGW is observed not to be happening.
3. why the oceans are cooling. The computer models, that are the basis of the AGW hypothesis, calculate that (barring any disruptive events such as major volcanoes) the oceans cannot show an absence of warming for a period of more than about 4 years. We are now well into the 6th year of no net ocean warming, and the oceans have in fact been cooling since 2006. In other words, the AGW hypothesis, as expressed by the computer models, is falsified.
These three (clouds, troposphere, oceans) are not the only tests that the AGW hypothesis has failed. Each one is sufficient to show that the hypothesis is false. Yet still there is a one-way gullibility.
Let’s stop worrying about who said what, and give more weight to the real world than to computer models. Let’s test the AGW hypothesis against real-world observations. That is how science is supposed to progress.

Joel
You will notice that in my post comparing the IPCC report to The Da Vinci code I did say that some of the material (in both) is undeniably factual. There is a lot of good science in AR4 but a lot of material that is overstated or conjectural and little distinction is made when threading together the overall narrative.
I remember posting a pile of historic references to the MWP and Roman optimum and your saying you weren’t very up on history. Well neither is MIchael Mann. As Al Gore admitted, the MWP was much more widespread than is claimed, but Mann tries to minimise it for the simple reason it does tend to spoil the ‘story.’ The hockey stick smooths out history, reducing the widespread impact of both the MWP and LIA. When making comparisons to ‘unprecedented’ events I refer to human history scales, and in that respect the MWP ended around 1300, so we are now likely warmer than any period in the last 700 years, but even that is now not as certain as I once thought, as certainly there have been some periods since then that about rivalled todays values.
Temperatures have barely warmed since the 1730’s, hardly indicating a runaway climate and perhaps indicating that we are rather closer to the climate of the LIA than the MWP.
As regards anomalies-to derive these you need to start off with accurate figures. With James Hansen admitting the global mean temperature could be incorrect by 2degrees F, plus the convoluted and unlikely method of calculating temperatures back to 1850 or whenever, plus UHI, plus changing locations and numbers of stations, plus surface station inconsistencies, I dont think we have any sort of reliable global data set to base anomalies on in the first place, never mind to fractions of a degree back to 1850.
Still no doubt you can explain all this in your article. I gave the plot lines as these are the recurring themes, but no doubt you can home in on one or two as required. The purpose was really to demonstrate that there is a difference between sceptics who study the subject and ‘Deniers’ who probably just pick up the odd ‘fact.’ they want to believe
We are rational perople and as I said before, if someone could prove the hypotheses (without overusing the word ‘unprecedented’; we would be crazy to refute the need to do someting to prevent a temp rise of up to 6.2C, now apparently increased to up to 9C (note the ‘up to’ caveat)
Hope you will find the time to put together an article putting over your point of view.
With best wishes
TonyB

Joel Shore: First of all your lines “the real world, the scientific community has already found the evidence of AGW quite compelling and has told the policymakers this and, for the most part, the policymakers seem to be accepting the scientific conclusions.” lack concensus.
Further more. IF we are to use the words ‘real world’ we better talk of the real world of science where a thesis never ever is allowed to be an unproven argument. Using an unproven argument as if it’s a fact to test against other hypotethical arguments has been called circle proof proving nothing since the days of the Ancient Greeks! Those who calls themselves scholars using circle proof as well as Ad Hominem ( ” hate to tell you but while the situation may be like you describe in your own head, it is not that way in the real world” = Ad Hominem)
By the way your assumption regarding ‘real world’ and scholars of science aren’t true: Neither Göran Ahlgren, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry, Lars Bern, former Director of the Retailer and the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, formerly chairman of The Natural Step environmental research
Peter STILBENE, professor of physical chemistry
CG Ribbing, Professor of Solid State Physics
Gösta Walin, professor emeritus of oceanography
Sten Kaijser, professor emeritus of mathematics
Wibjörn Karlén, Professor Emeritus of Physical Geography
If you have any knowledge at all of the needed science fields and the scholars who knows them best, you would know them all by name. Anyhow this is what they said:
“Our view is:
• The fact that it could not show a significant causal link between elevated carbon dioxide content and potential climate change.
• The fact that the observed warming during the 1900s does not give cause for concern, whatever the causes.
• That the climate scares based on low forecast value.
• The claim of consensus on the issue do not support.
• That a climate policy based on the IPCC scenarios is likely to lead to a devastating waste of human and financial resources that primarily affects the poor in the world.
Before society makes far-reaching decisions on climate policy, we should ensure to use on a sounder scientific basis than we have today. The Government should therefore initiate a hearing with a broad spectrum of representatives of the scientific community with different views on the climate issue.” 2nd March 2009, SvD
Thus the only thing you achived is proving that you either don’t accept normally used and by every scholar of science studied to use Theories of Science, or lack knowledge of how to present a solid hypotes which can be tested. Do you honestly believe that such behavior helps your case?

…many of the folks here (although not all of them) seem to have a sort of one-way skepticism. I.e., there is great skepticism about anything supporting AGW but very little skepticism about supposed evidence pointing in the other direction.

Your understanding of the role of skepticism in the scientific method leaves a lot to be desired.
It is not the duty of skeptics to assist the purveyors of the CO2=AGW hypothesis in proving their case. But with the evidence behind AGW so sadly lacking, it’s not surprising that you’d reach out to skeptics for help.
And regarding your comment:
“I have suggested that you might want to try commenting at other, less sympathetic, websites…”
That’s been tried, many times. Maybe you could persuade your buds over at Real Climate to stop their censorship of comments that disprove AGW.

I would like you to address the issue of testing. You could start with
1. my post of 23 May 01:36:04, about clouds

Well, I don’t have a whole lot to say about your post. I don’t disagree that clouds are a source of considerable uncertainty and if you want to believe that the cloud feedback is neither positive nor negative, I think that is probably a defensible position (although certainly not convincingly-demonstrated as being correct)…but I think it would still give you a climate sensitivity in the low end of the IPCC range, albeit on the lower end of that range.

2. why the tropical troposphere has barely warmed at all since around 1985, and has certainly warmed by a lot less than the surface. This is relevant, because the AGW hypothesis places the main location of CO2-caused warming firmly in the tropical troposphere, and shows much more warming there than at the surface. In other words, the “warming” part of AGW is observed not to be happening.

See my post of 25 May 17:39:13. In short, you are incorrect in attributing this magnification in the tropical troposphere specifically to the mechanism of CO2-caused warming. It is independent of the warming mechanism and essentially a prediction that results from the basic physical understanding of the tropical atmosphere. It has been verified for temperature fluctuations over, say, yearly timescales (such as El Nino – La Nina); the observational data in regards to whether it is obeyed at multidecadal timescales is the subject of ongoing analysis as both the satellite and radiosonde data sets have significant artifacts regarding such long term trends that makes it difficult to draw conclusions.

3. why the oceans are cooling. The computer models, that are the basis of the AGW hypothesis, calculate that (barring any disruptive events such as major volcanoes) the oceans cannot show an absence of warming for a period of more than about 4 years. We are now well into the 6th year of no net ocean warming, and the oceans have in fact been cooling since 2006. In other words, the AGW hypothesis, as expressed by the computer models, is falsified.

See here for a good discussion of this data and what it shows: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-ocean-cooling-disprove-global-warming.html I don’t think it is clear that there really is any significant disagreement between the ocean behavior and what the models predict.
Also, as a general note on how science proceeds in the real world: I know that the scientific method is often simplistically described as meaning that any piece of data that is contrary to a theory falsifies it. However, if that was really applied in the modern world, we wouldn’t have any theories because there isn’t a theory out there for which there hasn’t been some data published that appears to contradict its predictions and, at any given time, there are usually several outstanding puzzles between theory and data.
The actual process of science is that, over time, people will continue re-examining both the data and the theory (and its expression in terms of the models) and will eventually come to some sort of resolution. We have seen this occur in the past already. While you now cite just the tropical troposphere as a source of disagreement between models and observations, there used to be disagreement even for the global temperatures…with the data showing much less warming aloft than at the surface. Over time, a longer data set and the correction of various artifacts in the UAH dataset, as well as independent analyses of the satellite data by RSS and others, resolved this controversy…i.e., it turned out that the observational data was wrong or inadequate.
These differences between the ideal view of science and the actual reality of science is one of the reasons why for sociologically-controversial theories like AGW or evolution, scientists can reach conclusions at odds with what seems to doubters of these theories to be the correct conclusion.

“I have suggested that you might want to try commenting at other, less sympathetic, websites…”
That’s been tried, many times. Maybe you could persuade your buds over at Real Climate to stop their censorship of comments that disprove AGW.

They let through plenty of comments that challenge AGW. What they seem to tire of is comments that just repeat the same bogus arguments again and again and thus decrease the signal-to-noise ratio.
However, you don’t have to go to such a site that has an opposing view. I would recommend posting at a messageboard that does not have its own strong point of view and moderates only for form (e.g., not flaming other people) and not for content. An example is this messageboard: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=7 I think you would be surprised to find how unconvincing many of your arguments and graphs are to people who do not already share your point-of-view.

The hockey stick smooths out history, reducing the widespread impact of both the MWP and LIA.

There is a reason that this occurs that you don’t seem to be understanding: Saying that the MWP was widespread may be true but apparently only if you define the period of the warmth broadly enough. I.e., if you say, “Did many regions of the world experience some period of considerable warmth between, say, 800 and 1300AD?” then the answer might well be YES. However, the point is that the warm periods tended to be asynchronous at different places, so indeed when you look on a hemispherical or global scale, then yes, the warmth is smoothed out. That is not an artifact of the method used; it is simply the reality of computing the temperature on a hemispherical or global scale.
Here’s an analogy: Say that I tell you that “Last week, was a period of record heat all across the U.S.” However, let’s say when you actually look, you find that it was very hot in the West on Monday and Tuesday, in the Central Part of the nation on Wednesday and Thursday, and along the East Coast on Friday and Saturday but otherwise the temperatures were fairly normal. Then, what you will find when you average over the entire country is a week of a little above average temperatures but not the sort of dramatic warmth that you expected when we just focused on the fact that there was record warmth in certain periods of that whole time in certain different areas.

As regards anomalies-to derive these you need to start off with accurate figures. With James Hansen admitting the global mean temperature could be incorrect by 2degrees F … I dont think we have any sort of reliable global data set to base anomalies on in the first place, never mind to fractions of a degree back to 1850.

Well, others disagree with you and all data analyses of the surface temperature record and of things like the retreat of glaciers have come to the same conclusion. One thing that you need to understand is why anomalies tend to be much better behaved than absolute measurements. For that, read here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ under the heading “Anomalies and Absolute Temperatures.

We are rational perople and as I said before, if someone could prove the hypotheses (without overusing the word ‘unprecedented’; we would be crazy to refute the need to do someting to prevent a temp rise of up to 6.2C, now apparently increased to up to 9C (note the ‘up to’ caveat)

You seem to be confusing various numbers here. I think the 6.2 C number was an upper bound for an estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 from one particular study (you can correct me if I am wrong about where you got this number from). By contrast, the 9C number that you are quoting is, I believe, an upper bound estimate from the MIT study of how high temperatures might rise by the end of the century given some rise in our emissions. Presumably, it is for a scenario where our emissions continue to increase quite rapidly (as they have been over the last decade) and thus the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere go considerably beyond double the pre-industrial levels.
At any rate, it is you who are quoting these high-end numbers, not I. For example, I prefer to quote the full IPCC likely range for the equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2 to 4.5 C. (I don’t even mention the 6.2 C, which I believe was the upper bound from one particular study.)

Joel Shore,
never have I seen so much [snip] in all the 41 one (yes fortyone!) years I have participated in the debate regarding changing of world weather! New Ice Age or Warming up.
Mind you the fact that we would and should have a warming up from 1930’s to 1995/2000 was known in 1920’s and published works about in 1931!
Please present VALID arguments as well as non circular proofs for your opinion.

Joel
This thread is about to drop pff the edge of the world (which is flat as you well know) so I will see you on another thread.
All the best
Tony
Ps Get writing
PPS of course I understand-I just don’t agree

Joel Shore (14:02:03) :Clouds :
“.. I don’t disagree that clouds are a source of considerable uncertainty [..] if you want to believe that the cloud feedback is neither positive nor negative, I think that is probably a defensible position [..] but I think it would still give you a climate sensitivity in the low end of the IPCC range”
from IPCC Report AR4 8.6.2.3 : “[..] in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity [..] of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C [..]. The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivity estimates derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback [..].”
So removing cloud feedback reduces climate sensitivity to 1.9 +- 0.15, well below the bottom end 3.2-0.7 of the range used by the IPCC.Troposphere
You referred me to your post 25 May 17:39:13 : “[..] she is presumably talking about the idea that the temperature trends (and fluctuations) should be magnified as you go up in the tropical atmosphere [..] However, she is absolutely incorrect in saying that this is a signature of greenhouse gases[..]”
Take a look at the IPCC Report, chapter 9, figure 9.1, panels (c) and (f). Panel (f) shows total forcings, and the tropical troposphere forcing clearly comes from panel (c) “Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from [..] (c) wellmixed greenhouse gases”
Yet the global temperature measurements clearly show that this has not happened in the real climate since maybe 1981 – which is even well within the time period supposedly covered by the IPCC’s fig.9.1.http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/TropicsTroposphereGraph_LowRes.jpg
That “hotspot” in the IPCC’s fig.9.1 IS the global warming (apart from a small area near the N Pole). It doesn’t exist in the real world outside the computer models.Ocean cooling
I read your linked item. It claims that Leuliette found ocean warming. That is incorrect. That paper was able to state that the ocean warmed over the period 2003-2007 only by finding a lower temperature in 2003 than other papers. There was no warming from 2004 onwards.
Finding periods of non-warming in the past does not alter the fact that the computer models are seriously embarrassed if the ocean temperature fails to rise for 4 years or more. See the Pielke Sr article that I linked to before.Science
You say “the scientific method is often simplistically described as meaning that any piece of data that is contrary to a theory falsifies it”
If such data is at the fringes of a hypothesis then that is relevant. But the three issues that I highlighted – clouds / ECS, troposphere where greenhouse gases do their warming, and ocean cooling, are absolutely central to the AGW hypothesis. Without any one of these three the hypothesis of dangerous man-made global warming is absolutely dead. yet all three tests have now failed.

So removing cloud feedback reduces climate sensitivity to 1.9 +- 0.15, well below the bottom end 3.2-0.7 of the range used by the IPCC.

The 3.2 +- 0.7 C may be the range of the equilibrium climate sensitivity in the current climate models but the IPCC likely range for the ECS (based more on observational evidence than models) is between 2 and 4.5 C. So, the 1.9 +- 0.15 C is right at the bottom of that range.

Take a look at the IPCC Report, chapter 9, figure 9.1, panels (c) and (f). Panel (f) shows total forcings, and the tropical troposphere forcing clearly comes from panel (c) “Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from [..] (c) wellmixed greenhouse gases”
Yet the global temperature measurements clearly show that this has not happened in the real climate since maybe 1981 – which is even well within the time period supposedly covered by the IPCC’s fig.9.1.http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/TropicsTroposphereGraph_LowRes.jpg
That “hotspot” in the IPCC’s fig.9.1 IS the global warming (apart from a small area near the N Pole). It doesn’t exist in the real world outside the computer models.

Panel (c) dominates the total forcing simply because the IPCC estimates of the contributions to the total forcing have the anthropogenic greenhouse effect dominating. However, other forcings have the same pattern of magnification of the trend as you go up in the tropical troposphere (for the case of aerosols, this trend is a cooling one), although it isn’t as obvious because the contour interval makes it more difficult to resolve the structure of the weaker forcings. But presented here is a plot of what the structure of the warming would look like due to the solar forcing, which is very similar to the GHG forcing until you get into the stratosphere: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/ (And, the observations agree with the GHG forcing, not the solar forcing, structure in the stratosphere.)
As for the graph that you showed, there are several problems with it: The mid-troposphere values are essentially meaningless because the microwave channels are quite broad so that the mid-troposphere one has a tail into the stratosphere and is thus contaminated by the strong cooling there. (In fact, even the lower troposphere values may be a little bit contaminated by this, as Fu et al have argued.) Furthermore, you have selectively shown the UAH analysis whereas the RSS analysis shows considerably more warming in the tropical lower troposphere. And, the fact that these two analyses disagree so strongly in the tropics shows that the trends are in fact quite uncertain there due to data artifacts.

If such data is at the fringes of a hypothesis then that is relevant. But the three issues that I highlighted – clouds / ECS, troposphere where greenhouse gases do their warming, and ocean cooling, are absolutely central to the AGW hypothesis. Without any one of these three the hypothesis of dangerous man-made global warming is absolutely dead. yet all three tests have now failed.

These three issues are absolutely central only because you have made them so, choosing three points where there is some limited disagreement and ignoring all the rest. And, as I have noted above, you have misinterpreted these things quite a bit:
(1) While clouds are important, you haven’t really presented any compelling evidence to show that there is a zero cloud feedback and, at any rate, the absence of a cloud feedback would still give warming essentially right at the lower boundary of the IPCC likely range.
(2) The expected magnification of trends in the upper troposphere has nothing to do with “where greenhouse gases do their warming”, rather it has to do with the fact that the temperature structure of the tropical atmosphere is expected to be governed by moist adiabatic lapse rate theory, independent of the mechanism causing temperature trends or fluctuations. It is the warming in the troposphere with cooling in the stratosphere that is a fingerprint of the warming being due to greenhouse gases. Furthermore, you have cherrypicked the data set used to support your point, ignoring the fact that other data sets give different results.
(3) While ocean warming is important, the trends have to be looked at over a longer time period than a few years. This is true both because variability is expected over a few years and because the data sets don’t seem to give very robust trends over such short time periods (e.g, they disagree with one another).

Joel Shore – well, we probably shouldn’t argue for ever, we’ve both made our points. Time and the real climate will show who was right. I find your arguments very weak, but then you probably think the same of mine, so I’ll leave that to others to judge.
On the issue of cherry-picking – to put it politely : codswallop. I picked UAH and Hadley as the representatives of LT and surface respectively. These are each lower than the other teams – RSS and GISS – in their domain. Had I picked the other two the result would have been the same.
And when you say “These three issues are absolutely central only because you have made them so, choosing three points where there is some limited disagreement and ignoring all the rest.” that is equally codswallop. Those were three remarkably important tests, central to the whole “dangerous AGW” hypothesis. The fact that other tests were possible is irrelevant. A hypothesis has to pass all relevant tests. It is not in any way cherry-picking to find three (three!!) absolutely major tests that fail, when other tests were possible. To falsify a hypothesis it is sufficient for ONE test to fail, and “defenders” of the hypothesis are not at liberty to decide which test that should be.

Mike,
Indeed we probably could argue forever. While your statement about a falsifying a hypothesis is technically true, the point is that the hypothesis has to be definitively falsified. And, your examples don’t even come close for the reasons that I noted. Also, in reality, a theory often gets modified…not completely falsified…in response to some data that disagrees with what it predicts. For example, Let’s say it does turn out to be true that the trend in the ocean heat content data is incompatible with what climate models predict to be possible in the presence of greenhouse gas forcings (and the absence of a volcanic eruption) [and at this point, this is very very hypothetical because I haven’t seen anything definitive enough in either the data or analysis of the models to show this]. This would not mean that AGW is falsified. What it would mean is that there is an incompatibility between the theory as currently expressed by the models and the data, and would prompt scientists work hard to understand it better. But, it could turn out, for example, that the current climate models do systematically tend to underestimate the variability in global ocean heat content trends in the presence of increasing greenhouse gases without the fundamental theory of AGW being incorrect.
Science is not the simple cut-and-dried process that it is often simplified to in elementary discussions of the scientific method. There ain’t a theory in the world for which you could not find some data in the peer-reviewed literature that appears to be in contradiction with it.
As I noted, I think the difference between the sort of naive, simplistic view of science and the actual practice of science in the real world is one reason why the scientific community as a whole can reach one conclusion on controversial issues (such as AGW or the origins of life), while laypeople motivated by this issue to investigate the science arrive at a different conclusion.

jeez: I don’t really think it is a new kind of science that needs a new term. I think that all of modern science works in a similar way. The simple fact is that by the time a theory becomes reasonably well-established in science, there are lots of independent lines of evidence supporting it. And, if we abandoned such a theory every time we found a piece of data that seemed to contradict it, we would never get anywhere.
People may want theories to be falsifiable and indeed they should be but it does not follow that the proper approach to a few pieces of evidence that seem to be in contradiction with the theory is to conclude that the theory is falsified. First, one tries to better understand the contradiction and see whether either there is a problem with the data (and there are indeed some very serious concerns with the data in the above-cited cases) or a way that the theory can be modified to accommodate the data. It is only when there are enough contradictions between theory and data that do not seem like they can be reconciled…and / or some competing hypothesis that does a better job explaining this data and also explains a large part of the data that the original theory explained…that the theory will be completely abandoned.
This is the way science has worked and the way I think it should work. And, indeed, AGW has itself paid its due and spent a long time in the “scientific wilderness” since Arrhenius first did his calculations before it earned the title of being an accepted theory.

Joel Shore – I’m off overseas for a couple of months so will bow out of this forum. I think our interchange had run its course, anyway. I applaud you for entering the “lion’s den” (and the lion’s den for being open) and hopefully everyone has learned something. And hopefully the real climate will finally resolve this issue before we all go mad or bankrupt.

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